Got his PhD in Molecular Biology in 1987 at the University of Montpellier (France).

He is internationally recognized for his participation in the discovery of metabotropic glutamate receptors, and his studies related to the allosteric modulation and activation mechanism of this family of G protein coupled receptors.

Since 2003, he is head of the Molecular Pharmacology Department within the Institute of Functional Genomics (Montpellier, France), and became director of this Institute in January 2011, until Dec 2020. His research is focused on the molecular and cellular dynamics of GPCRs, mostly mGlu and GABAB receptors.

Over the recent years he developed innovative approaches to study cell surface receptors, including biosensors, photoswitchable ligands and nanobodies as pharmacological tools and potential therapeutic agents. His studies led to new concepts in the GPCR field, such as: the activation of cell surface receptors by intracellular proteins; the regulation of GPCRs by both negative and positive allosteric modulators, the asymmetric functioning of GPCR dimers.


https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1423-345X