Anne Bertolotti

Anne Bertolotti In 2022 she was appointed Head of the MRC LMB's Neurobiology Division. She is known for her research into the cellular defences against misfolded proteins and the mechanisms underlying their deposition, the molecular problem causative of neurodegenerative diseases.

Education Anne Bertolotti earned 2 B.S. degrees in biochemistry and plant physiology and an M.S. degree in cell and molecular biology from the Louis Pasteur University of Strasbourg, France. Bertolotti also received her PhD from the Louis Pasteur University for the discovery of hTAFII68 (now TAF15) while working with Laszlo Tora and Pierre Chambon at Institut de Genetique et de Biologie Moleculaire et Cellulaire (IGBMC).

In 2001, Bertolotti became an Inserm Associate Professor at Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris. In 2006, she became a group leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. She is known for her work on the mechanisms governing aggregation of disease-causing proteins, for identifying components of cellular defense mechanisms against protein aggregation and for the discovery of strategies to rescue cell survival under protein misfolding stress.

One of such strategies consists of selective inhibition of an eIF2 phosphatase to reduce transient protein synthesis, allowing the cell to "catch up" with the required handling of misfolded proteins. Her group subsequently demonstrated that selective inhibitors had therapeutic effects in mouse models of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and Huntington's disease.

Professional associations and awards

2004: EMBO Young Investigator Award 2013: ERC consolidator grant 2013: Member of EMBO 2014: Hooke Medal by the British Society for Cell Biology, for contributions to the understanding of abnormal protein folding 2017: Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) 2017: GlaxoSmithKline Award from the Biochemical Society