Affiliation: Institut Cochin, Inserm, CNRS, Université Paris Cité

Dr. Antoine Zalc was trained as an agronomic engineer in Toulouse, France. He earned his PhD in Developmental Biology at the University Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, in 2014. There he worked in the laboratory of Dr. Fred Relaix and studied the molecular mechanisms controlling cell cycle progression and cell fate decision during limb skeletal muscle formation and craniofacial development in mammals. He then moved to Stanford University, USA, as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Joanna Wysocka. He demonstrated that cranial neural crest cells transiently and naturally reactivate pluripotency programs during their development, allowing them to expand their differentiation potential. Dr. Antoine Zalc opened his laboratory at the Cochin Institute, Paris, in 2022. His research elucidates the mechanisms regulating pluripotency program expression during cranial neural crest cell development and post-natal craniofacial regeneration. This project is currently funded by the European Research Council.