Lou Fourriere

Lou Fourriere completed her Ph.D. in 2016 in the Cell Biology and cancer department at the Institut Curie (Paris, France) after 4 years in the laboratory of F. Perez. Her research investigated the role of microtubules in intracellular trafficking, particularly membrane trafficking from the Golgi to the cell surface. By using the Retention Using Selective Hooks (RUSH) system, which had been developed by F. Perez, to synchronize the anterograde trafficking of cargoes in real time, she showed that cargoes are delivered to ‘hot spots’ on the plasma membrane and that microtubules were not strictly essential for cargoes delivery to the surface.

After her Ph.D., Lou joined the team of Paul Gleeson (Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute, University of Melbourne). She is investigating the intracellular trafficking of the b-secretase (BACE1) and amyloid precursor protein (APP) to characterize their trafficking routes and the machinery regulating these trafficking routes, information that could be exploited for the future development of novel therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease. By using a range of optical imaging approaches including the RUSH system, spinning disk, TIRF microscopy, and high-resolution imaging she has been able to track the transport pathways of newly synthesized BACE1 and APP in HeLa cells and mouse primary neurons. Her studies have demonstrated the partitioning of BACE1 and APP within the Golgi apparatus, a process which is critical to the regulation of APP processing and amyloid production within the secretory pathway.