Prof. Jules Hoffmann University of Strasbourg, France

Jules Hoffmann is a Distinguished Class Research Director at CNRS and Group Leader at the University of Strasbourg. Since 2007 he has also been President of the French Academy of Sciences. He received his PhD from the University of Strasbourg in 1969. His studies have focused primarily on the molecular... read moreand cellular aspects of the innate immune response of Drosophila, with a recent extension to the malaria vector insect Anopheles. Hoffmann and colleagues are in particular credited for having provided the first evidence that Toll receptors mediate immune defense. In 2011 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine, one half jointly with Bruce Beutler "for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity", and the other half was awarded to Ralph Steinman "for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity". All three researchers present talks in The Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection.