Renaud Du Pasquier

Renaud A. Du Pasquier performed his medical studies and was board-certified in Internal Medicine and Neurology in Geneva, Switzerland.

From 1999 to 2004, he did a post-doc in neuroimmunology and neurovirology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School in Boston in Norman Letvin and Igor Koralnik’s laboratory.

Primarily devoted to the research in Multiple Sclerosis (MS), his laboratory has studied in detail the involvement of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in the pathogenesis of MS, using EBV-specific  CD8+ T cells as a signature. His team has now embarked into an ambitious project, trying to decipher the interaction of CD8+ T cells and auto-reactive antibodies with autologous CNS cells, using human induced pluripotent stem cells.

His laboratory also studies the interaction between the new disease modifying therapies for MS and the antiviral responses, mostly to JC virus, the agent of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML). Recently, his laboratory has explored the immunopathogenesis of the neurological complications of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Finally, he co-leads a clinical research program dealing with the neurocognitive disorders in HIV+ patients.