Dr. Jacques CHEVALIER

Born March 19th, 1944, Jacques Chevalier has led an Inserm Group of research for almost thirty years. In September 2002, he was assigned by the Director General of Inserm to the Science and Technology Department of the French Embassy in the United Kingdom as official representative of the Inserm in the UK and Deputy Scientific Counsellor.

His scientific work was first devoted to the water channel induced by the antidiuretic hormone in the epithelial cells of kidney collecting duct, using the experimental model of frog bladder. In 1974, he demonstrated for the first time the presence of specific structures, which were inserted at the apical pole of these cells under hormonal challenge. Theses structures have further been demonstrated as the aquaporine AQP2. Then Dr. Chevalier focussed his activities on the exploration of nephropathies associated with metabolic disorders such as obesity, diabetes and hyperlipidemia. He published more than one hundred scientific papers on water permeability, nephropathy and imaging.

As Deputy Counsellor, Jacques Chevalier, in partnership with the Wellcome Trust and the MRC, has developed the Anglo-French Alliance for Tropical Medicine, which now comprises the Wellcome Trust, MRC, DfID, Inserm, CNRS, Pasteur Institute and the Institute for Research and Development (IRD). He has also launched a Joint PhD programme, which allows PhD students to be trained in both countries, under the direction of two supervisors. He is in charge of the Franco-British Hubert Curien “Alliance” partnership. He is involved in the promotion of Inserm European Associated research Laboratories (EAL) and International Interface Contract. He is currently working on the development of clinical research network between France and the UK.