Philippe RONDARD
Is leading the team ”Neuroreceptors: dynamics and functions” at the Institute of Functional Genomics in Montpellier.
He has developed innovative tools to clarify key questions in the activation process and allosteric properties of class C GPCRs with the aim to provide tools to decipher their physiological roles and therapeutic potentials. He demonstrated that metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) are mandatory dimers essential for agonist activation.
He developed innovative strategies to study the role of each subunit in these dimers and FRET based conformational sensors.
These technologies were essential in the demonstration of mGlu heterodimers and for the analysis of mGluR activation at the single molecule level.
These developments were made possible thanks to his long-term collaboration with the Perkin-Elmer CisBio company, with which he generated a number of GPCR assays now commercially available.
Recently, he has developed camelid single domain antibodies (nanobodies) to detect and modulate GPCR signaling.