Lydia Kerkerian-Le Goff receives the "RACHEL, AJZEN AND LÉON IAGOLNITZER" 2018 Prize

Lydia Kerkerian-Le Goff, head of the team “Cellular Interactions, Neurodegeneration and Neuroplasticity” at the Developmental Biology Institute of Marseille, is the 2018 recipient of the “RACHEL, AJZEN AND LÉON IAGOLNITZER” Prize from the Medical Research Foundation.

The Scientific Prizes of the Foundation for Medical Research reward each year some of the greatest talents in French research in an health field.

The Rachel, Ajzen and Léon Iagolnitzer Prize recognizes researchers for their contribution to advances in the field of ageing. Distinguished works are research projects that provide a better understanding of the mechanisms of ageing, particularly those related to the brain under normal or pathological conditions.

Lydia Kerkerian-Le Goff is awarded for her team’s work on the normal and pathological functioning of a set of brain structures involved in movement control, the basal ganglia, notably in the context of Parkinson’s disease, an ageing-related neurodegenerative disease. Increasing knowledge on the adaptive changes in cellular communication that delay then underlie the expression of the characteristic motor symptoms with the disease evolution, as well as the beneficial or side effects of the current treatments, is essential to open novel therapeutic perspectives.

The award ceremony has taken place on Monday, November 5, 2018 at the Collège de France in Paris.