Jocelyne Bloch PhD

Dr. Jocelyne Bloch graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of Lausanne University in December 1994. She trained in Neurosurgery with Prof Nicolas de Tribolet, Prof Arnaldo Benini, and Prof Jean-Guy Villemure in Lausanne and Zurich and obtained her neurosurgical degree in 2002. She specialized in stereotactic and functional neurosurgery and acquired an extensive experience and expertise in deep brain stimulation (DBS) and neuromodulation for movement disorders, pain, and epilepsy. She is in charge of the functional neurosurgical unit at the CHUV. Very active in experimental medicine and translational neuroscience, she nourishes a profound interest in the development of new indications for DBS, and in advancing technologies and therapeutic paradigms in neuromodulation, neuro-regeneration, and cell therapy. She seeks to gather all these novel therapeutic strategies under a common umbrella that will foster the optimization of treatment options for patients suffering from neurological impairments.
From 1997 to 1999, she joined the laboratory led by Prof Patrick Aebischer where she performed both basic and translational research projects in the field of gene therapy and neuroregeneration. She acquired a substantial experience in experimental neurosurgery in multiple animal models of neurological disorders including Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord injury. She contributed to two high-profile studies in non-human primates published in Science and Nature Medicine. She continues fruitful collaborations with Prof Eric Rouiller, who leads the Primate center in Fribourg.
In collaboration with Dr Jean Francois Brunet, she is pioneering the development of adult brain cell autologous transplantation for patients with stroke. She also collaborates with Prof Grégoire Courtine and Prof José del R. Millan, who are both professors in the center for neuroprosthetics at EPFL. These research projects focus on the translation of electrochemical neuromodulation therapies to improve locomotion after spinal cord injury in humans, and for the development of closed-loop DBS strategies in Parkinsonian patients.