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PATRICE COURVALIN, M. D.
Patrice Courvalin, M.D., is a Professor at the Institut Pasteur where he directs the French
National Reference Center for Antibiotics and is the Head of the Antibacterial Agents
Unit since 1983. He is an expert in the genetics and biochemistry of antibiotic resistance
in bacteria. In particular, he and his collaborators first described and then elucidated
vancomycin resistance in Enterococcus. His research has led to a revision of the dogma
describing natural dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes. He and his colleagues
demonstrated that a wide variety of pathogenic bacteria can promiscuously exchange the
genetic material conferring antibiotic resistance, proved that conjugation could account
for dissemination of resistance determinants between phylogenetically remote bacterial
genera , elucidated the transposition mechanism of conjugative transposons from Grampositive cocci, and most recently, has obtained direct gene transfer from bacteria to
mammalian cells. His work is reported in more than 290 publications in international
scientific journals.
Dr Courvalin received master’s degrees in Sciences and in Human Biology from the
University of Sciences in Paris, his Doctorate in Medical Sciences cum laude from the
Medical School in Paris, and was a medical resident at the Hopital de l’Institut Pasteur.
Since 1970, he has held many positions at the Institut Pasteur where he served as
Chairman of the Department of Fundamental and Medical Microbiology (2002-2003).
He was a Research Associate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1974-1977), and
was Visiting Scholar in the Department of Biology, University of California-San Diego
(1989-1990). Prof. P. Courvalin is Doctor honoris causa of the University of El Bosque,
Bogota, and of the University of Mons, Hainaut. He is also the recipient of the Thérèse
Lebrasseur (1983), Jacques Monod (1989), and Jean Valade (2007) awards of the
Fondation de France, the Louis Garrod award of the British Society for Antimicrobial
Chemotherapy (1994), the Hamao Umezawa award of the International Society for
Chemotherapy (1995), the Hoechst Marion Roussel award of the American Society for
Microbiology (1997), the ESCMID award for Excellence in Clinical Microbiology and
Infectious Diseases (2001), the AGF award of the French National Academy of Sciences
(2004), and the ISI awards « French Microbiologist Citation Laureate » (1981-1998 and
2004). Dr Courvalin is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, the Royal
Academy of Medecine, Sarragossa, the Royal College of Physicians, London, and an
honorary member of the Australian Society for Antimicrobials. He serves on the editorial
board of several international journals in microbiology and infectious diseases.