Consortium
Université de Montréal, Canada
Prof. Michel Bouvier
Michel Bouvier is a professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine and principal investigator at the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC) of the Université de Montréal (UdeM) and has been CEO of IRIC since 2014. He obtained his B.Sc. (1979) in biochemistry and his Ph.D (1985) in Neurological Sciences from the Université de Montréal. He was a post-doctoral fellow at Duke University in the laboratory of the Nobel Laureate, Robert J. Lefkowitz (1985-1988). In 1989, he returned to Montréal as a professor of biochemistry and a scholar of the Medical Research Council of Canada at the Faculty of Medicine of UdeM. He was Chairman of the Biochemistry Department between 1997 and 2005 and was awarded the Hans-Selye/Bristol-Myers Squibb chair in Cell and Molecular Biology (1997-2005). He held the Canada Research Chair in Signal Transduction and Molecular Pharmacology (2001-2022). Dr. Bouvier is the author of 363 scientific publications and delivered more than 500 invited conferences.
His papers attracted more than 39,756 citations leading to a Hirsh (h) factor of 111. He has supervised the studies of 79 graduate students and 47 post-doctoral fellows. He is a world-renowned expert in the field of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). His work led to paradigm shifts that had significant impact on drug discovery including the discovery of inverse agonism at GPCRs and pharmacological chaperones to restore folding of disease-causing genetically mutated GPCRs. His work on the functional selectivity of GPCRs contributed to establishing the concept of ligand-biased signalling that is now integrated in many drug discovery programs. He also pioneered the use of bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET)-based methods for the study of protein-protein interactions and signalling activity in living cells. His contributions to the field of biochemistry and molecular pharmacology were recognized by the attribution of many awards and distinctions including: the Merck-Frosst award from the Canadian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular & Cell Biology (1997), the Senior Investigator award from the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences (2012), the Julius Axelrod Award in pharmacology from the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (2017), the Quebec Government Wilder Penfield award for biomedical research (2017) and the 2021 Killam Award in Health Sciences from the Canada Council for the Arts. He is a fellow the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and of the Academy of Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada as well as a knight of the National Order of Québec.
