Jean Phillippe Pin PhD

Jean-Philippe Pin got his PhD in Molecular Biology in 1987 at the University of Montpellier 2 (France). He participated in the discovery of the metabotropic glutamate receptors. As a post doctoral fellow at the Salk Institute, he cloned and characterized new mGlu receptor variants. In 1992, he joined Joel Bockaert's laboratory in Montpellier and managed a team focused on the structure function relationship of mGluRs. Since 2003, he is head of the Molecular Pharmacology Department within the Institute of Functional Genomics (Montpellier, France), and became director of this Institute in January 2011. His research is focused on the molecular and cellular dynamics of GPCRs, mostly mGlu and GABAB receptors. His studies led to new concepts in the GPCR field, such as: the activation of cell surface receptors by intracellular proteins; the regulation of GPCRs by both negative and positive allosteric modulators, the asymmetric functioning of GPCR dimers.