IECB has a new specialist in imaging and chemistry of carbohydrates

Last October Dr. Frédéric Friscourt has joined the IECB as a Group Leader. Specialized in chemical glycobiology he is focused on developing new probes to study the glycome^* and its actions on the cellular machinery.

Frédéric Friscourt received his PhD from the University of Glasgow, UK in 2009, under the guidance of Prof. Pavel Kočovský, on the development of novel chiral ligands for enantioselective catalysis. He then joined the group of Dr. Geert-Jan Boons at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, USA, as a post-doctoral research associate (2009-2014) to transition to chemical biology research. There, he became involved in the design and synthesis of bioorthogonal probes for imaging the glycome.

Sugars, or glycans, are essential components of the living. Not only they are energetically vital but they also are involved in numerous cellular mechanisms such as the correct folding of proteins. But it is only recently that they have been recognized as key participants in the cell-to-cell communication.

Try to understand more precisely the functional role of glycans is the goal of Frédéric Friscourt, especially through imaging tools. By using organic chemistry the Friscourt group aims at developing novel tools that can probe the influence of glycans in the brain, notably in neurodegenerative diseases.

As he joined the IECB, Frédéric Friscourt obtained a Junior Chair position from the Excellence Initiative program (IdEx) at the Institut de Neurosciences cognitives et intégratives d'Aquitaine (INCIA).

His team is affiliated to INCIA, UMR 5287 CNRS, University of Bordeaux and he is already recruiting.

Read more about Frédéric Friscourt:

Its Research page

Dr. Frédéric Friscourt obtained a Junior Chair position

^*: The glycome is the entire complement of sugars, whether free or present in more complex molecules, of an organism. The glycome may in fact be one of the most complex entities in nature.