Agnes Lehuen

Agnes Lehuen is director of the department “Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes” and head of the laboratory “Immunology of diabetes” at Cochin Institute and University Paris Descartes. She is cofounder of the Laboratory of Excellence INFLAMEX. She did her PhD in Paris, a post-doctoral training in the USA and got a CNRS position at Necker hospital in Paris. Since 2002 she is team leader and in 2014 her laboratory joined Cochin Institute.

Dr Lehuen research has been focused on autoimmunity and more recently she has broaden her interest on metabolic diseases. Her laboratory has highlighted the key role of innate immune cells in the initiation or the prevention of type 1 diabetes, with a particular interest on NKT and MAIT cells. She also described the interplay between beta pancreatic cells and neutrophils in initiating autoimmunity and the ambivalent role of plasmacytoid dendritic cells in this pathology. These past years, she reported MAIT cell alterations in type 1 and type 2 diabetic patients and obese patients. Moreover in type 1 diabetes while MAIT cells are cytotoxic against pancreatic beta cells, they might play a key protective role by controlling gut integrity.