Nationality Dutch Name Jean Pieters | ||
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Born 5 January 1962 (age 62) Heerlen ( 1962-01-05 ) Institutions University of Leuven, Maastricht University , European Molecular Biology Laboratory , Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, Basel Institute for Immunology, Biozentrum University of Basel Institution European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Basel Institute for Immunology, Biozentrum University of Basel | ||
Jean Pieters is a Dutch biochemist and Professor at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel, Switzerland.
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Life
Jean Pieters studied biochemistry and microbiology at the University of Leuven in Belgium. After completing his doctorate at Maastricht University, the Netherlands, he joined the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg in 1989 as a postdoctoral fellow. From 1992 until 1995 Jean Pieters researched at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam as a junior group leader. In 1996 he was recruited to the Basel Institute for Immunology and in 2002 appointed to the Biozentrum at the University of Basel where he since teaches and continues his research as Professor of Biochemistry.
Work
Jean Pieters investigates the role of coronin proteins in activating cellular signal transduction processes. Coronin proteins are widely distributed in the eukaryotic kingdom and conserved from yeast to man. One of the most conserved members of this protein family, mammalian coronin 1, was originally discovered in his laboratory as a host factor responsible for the intracellular survival of pathogenic mycobacteria (Ferrari 1999). Subsequent work from his laboratory showed that coronin proteins regulate diverse physiologic processes including T cell homeostasis (Mueller 2008), learning and memory (Jayachandran 2014) and development (Vinet 2014). Recent work from his and other laboratories suggests that mutations in coronin proteins may underlie immune-related and cognitive disorders in humans, implicating coronin proteins in important physiological pathways.