Sandrine Humbert, Research Director at the French Institute for Health and Medical Research Inserm, leads a research group at the Paris Brain Institute, ICM. Trained as a biotech engineer, S. Humbert worked during her PhD on transcription factors (JM Egly, IGBMC, Strasbourg). She then completed two post-doctoral stays (LH Tsai, Harvard Medical School, Boston and F Saudou, Institute Curie, Orsay) during which she focused on brain development and neurodegenerative processes. Since 2009, her team combines cellular approaches and analysis of mouse models to understand the physiological functions of huntingtin, the protein mutated in Huntington’s disease (HD), and to characterize the mechanisms underlying HD pathogenesis.

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In the last ten year, the major contribution of her team to the field was to show that the developing HD brain is affected and to describe how this contribute to the pathology. Her work establishes a connection between abnormal brain development and adult HD and shows that there is an early critical window of postnatal development that merits attention for future therapies.