Laurence Morel, PhD, United states of America

Laurence Morel obtained her PhD from the University of Aix-Marseille (France). She trained as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Ward Wakeland at the University of Florida (USA) in immunogenetics, where she started to work on the genetic basis of lupus in mouse models. She was appointed with a faculty position in the department of Pathology, Immunology, and Laboratory Medicine at UF in 1999, where she is currently a tenured professor and the Vice Chair for Research and Academic Affairs.

Her research is centered on the mechanisms of lupus pathogenesis using mouse models as well as patients’ samples. She has been continuously funded by the NIH, as well as by the Lupus Research Alliance and the Lupus Foundation for America. She is an expert in mouse models of autoimmune diseases and she has written several reviews on the mouse models of lupus. Her current research focuses on the genetic and metabolic determinants of lupus phenotypes in CD4⁺ T cells, as well as the role of the microbiome in lupus pathogenesis.  She is also conducting pre-clinical studies to explore the therapeutic potentials of treatments combining metabolic inhibitors to standard-of-care or emerging biologics.  Her long-term goal is to identify and validate therapeutic targets using a combination of genetic, metabolic and microbial / metabolomics approaches. She has published more than 150 papers in top journals.