Julie Le Merrer

10 Boulevard Tonnellé 37032 TOURS CEDEX 1

Bureau S320, Bâtiment L, Faculté des Sciences et Techniques, Parc de Grandmont

Phone

02 47 36 69 96

Email

julie.lemerrer@univ-tours.fr

• Objective 1 : Identify the neuronal and molecular substrates involved in the control of social behavior, and under pathological conditions, in the etiology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD),
• Objective 2 : Test novel pharmacological and/or behavioral approaches to faciliate or restore socialbility, in physiological or pathological (ASD) context,
• Objective 3 : Develop innovative pharmacological tools, notably single chain antibodies or "nanobodies"  targeting GPCRs, in order to understand the role of these receptors in modulating social behavior and/or to treat autistic symptoms.

Currently Research Director at CNRS, I am a neuroscientist expert in behavioral psychopharmacology, reward processes and social behavior in mice.
I defended a State Doctorate in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2000, while I was pursuing a PhD in Neurosciences and Pharmacology from 1997-2002 in the lab of Robert Jaffard (University of Bordeaux), under the supervision of Pierre Cazala. During my PhD, I explored the role of mu opioid receptors in interfacing learning, anxiety and motivation in the septum. In 2003, I started a first post-doctoral position at the University of Sussex (UK), under the supervision of Dai Stephens, where I investigated plastic and behavioural consequences of alcohol withdrawal and conditioning to drug and food cues. In 2006, I joined the lab of Brigitte Kieffer at IGBMC (Strasbourg). There, I characterized the long-term behavioral and transcriptional consequences of drug exposure and explored the functional roles of mu and delta opioid receptors using knockout mouse models. I notably validated the mu opioid receptor null mice as a model of autism, and identified for the first time the mGlu4 receptor as a promising therapeutic target to relieve autistic symptoms.
I was recruited as a Research Associate at CNRS in 2014 and established my team in co-direction with Jerome Becker, molecular biologist and pharmacologist, at PRC (INRA, CNRS, University of Tours). We focused our research on identifying the neurobiological underpinnings of social behaviour under physiological and pathological (autism) conditions and developing novel therapeutic strategies to relieve autistic symptoms across multiple mouse models. We have implemented various complementary approaches to achieve these goals, from in vitro pharmacology and transcriptome analysis to behavioural pharmacology, local gene knockdown and optopharmacology. These fruitful years of research have confirmed our strong interest in neuropsychiatric disorders and we have now joined the team “Neuro-functional Psychiatry” at iBrain, Inserm U1253, University of Tours.