Research Focus

Malaria is one of the most serious infectious diseases of humans, with 300–600 million clinical cases and 1-2 million deaths annually. Adaptive immune responses in the host limit the clinical impact of infection and provide partial protection against pathogen replication; most infections are clinically silent, as a result. In non-immune individuals, infections are more clinically overt, and a minority of these can become severe or life threatening, manifesting a range of overlapping syndromes with complex aetiologies. Our objectives are two fold: firstly, to identify correlates of protection or pathology during Plasmodium infection.

This will allow us to determine whether the immune responses associated with specific antigens play a role in protection, and subsequently to identify the mechanisms of this protection. Secondly we aim to define the basis of parasite sequestration and how the immune system can participate or interfere with this process.

Biography

Laurent Renia obtained his PhD in 1991 at the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, France where he studied the immune response against the pre-ertythrocytic phase of malaria. He continued to work on malaria immunology in New York University (1991-1992).

He then returned to Paris in 1993 where he obtained a permanent position as junior research scientist at the French National Institute of Health (INSERM) studying malaria immunology at the INSERM Unit 313 of the Hopital Pitie-Salpetriere in Paris. He moved to the INSERM Unit 445 at the Institut Cochin in Paris where he started his own group in 1997. Between 2001-2006, he became research director at INSERM, and co-director and director of the Department of Immunology at the Institut Cochin. He joined SIgN in 2007.