Alexandre Baffet

Alexandre Baffet is a French cell biologist and Researcher at Inserm working at Institut Curie in Paris, where he leads the Cell Biology of Mammalian Neurogenesis team within the Cell Biology and Cancer research unit (UMR144). His research focuses on understanding brain development, particularly the role of radial glial cells in neocortex formation.

Dr. Baffet completed his PhD at University Pierre & Marie Curie in Paris, studying cell polarity and the cytoskeleton in Drosophila. He then conducted postdoctoral research at Columbia University in New York with Richard Vallee, where he identified mechanisms for nuclear migration in rodent neuronal progenitor cells. In 2016, he joined INSERM and Institut Curie to establish his independent research group.

His laboratory investigates three main research themes: (1) mechanisms of polarized trafficking in radial glial cells, (2) human neurogenesis, and (3) brain malformations. His team has developed innovative live imaging techniques to study these processes in both mouse models and human tissue. They use cerebral organoids derived from iPS cells, human fetal brain tissue, and in vitro cultures of radial glial cells to investigate human-specific aspects of brain development.

Dr. Baffet's research has important implications for understanding neurodevelopmental disorders such as microcephaly. His work on Zika virus demonstrated how it specifically targets radial glial cells, leading to cell death and reduced brain size. He has also investigated how mutations in genes like WDR81 and DHC1H1 affect brain development.

Among his notable achievements, Dr. Baffet was awarded the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller Impulscience program in 2023. His research has been published in high-impact journals including Nature Cell Biology, Nature Communications, and Journal of Cell Biology.