Pascale Cossart

Pascale Cossart is an award-winning bacteriologist at the Pasteur Institute of Paris, and the foremost authority on Listeria monocytogenes, a deadly and common food-borne pathogen responsible for encephalitis, meningitis, bacteremia, gastroenteritis, and other diseases.

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Cossart's studies of the infectious agent Listeria monocytogenes have helped develop a complete picture of this organism and its approaches, offering hope not just for resolving Listeria infection, but also shedding light on bacterial infections generally.

Listeria is a food-borne bacterial pathogen responsible for numerous illnesses and a mortality rate of 30%. The bacteria is one of the best models of intracellular parasitism because it is particularly hardy, able to survive in a variety of cells, cross multiple host barriers, and spreads through actin-based motility. Cossart's work has shed light on the genetic and biochemical processes that make Listeria so effective and lethal, identifying the bsh gene; regulatory mechanisms such as an RNA thermosensor that control expression of the virulence genes such as bsh; and the ways in which Listeria enters cells and crosses physiological barriers such as the blood-brain barrier, the intestinal barrier, and the placental barrier. The discovery by Cossart's lab of the interaction between L. monocytogenes' protein, internalin, and its cell receptor, E-cadherin, was the first such study that successfully demonstrated the molecular mechanism that permits a bacterial agent to cross the placental barrier.

As part of her work she has also developed important biological tools, including a transgenic mouse that was the first animal model to overcome bacterial species-specificity. The mouse carried a human version version of a host cell membrane receptor that L. monocytogenes used to enter cells.

Cossart earned a B.S. and M.S. from Lille University in 1968, and an M.S. in chemistry from Georgetown University in 1971. She earned her Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Paris in 1977 (Paris VII University). She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Pasteur Institute. She is currently a Professor and Head of the Unité des Interactions Bactéries Cellules at the Pasteur Institute.

Significant Publications

• Cellular Microbiology, 2nd Ed. (textbook), edited by Pascale Cossart, Patrice Boquet, and Staffan Normark
• Science June 1, 2001
• Cossart & Viega, Nature Cell Biology Aug. 21, 2005

Awards, Prizes, and Honorary Lecturers

• Carlos J. Finlay Prize for Microbiology (1995)
• Richard Lounsbery Prize (1998)
• Helena Rubenstein / UNESCO Award for Women in Science Leadership (1998)
• Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur (1998) and Officier de l'Ordre du Merite, French Legion of Honor
• Louis Pasteur Gold Medal (2000), Swedish Society of Medicine
• Valade Prize (2003), Fondation de France
• Margaret Pittman Lecture, National Institutes of Health, 2003
• President, Conseil Scientifique of the Pasteur Institute
• Corresponding member, French Academy of Sciences
• Member, French Conseil National de la Science
• Member, American Academy of Microbiology
• Member, German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina (German Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina)