The Executive board supports and is led by the Director of the IHU. It is made up of the strategic coordinator, the operational coordinator and the administrative and financial manager. The strategic coordinator’s role is to propose new scientific and clinical strategic directions to promote innovation within the IHU and to ensure the coherence of the overall policies of the various HealthAge IHU boards, while the operational coordinator implements the policy in collaboration with the director. The executive board meets on a weekly basis, and once a month brings together researchers from the various laboratories involved in the operational monitoring of actions relating to the different pillars.
Weekly board
Sandrine ANDRIEU is Professor of Public Health at the University of Toulouse, hospital practitioner and Head of the Clinical Epidemiology and Public Health Department at Toulouse University Hospital. She is Adjunct Professor at the University of New Mexico (UNM-USA) and, since 2009, head of the AGING MAINTAIN team (MAintain Functions and INTrinsec capacities with Aging: Preventive and Personalized INterventional Research) at the CERPOP (Centre d’Epidémiologie et de Recherche en santé des POPulations), UMR1295 INSERM UPS (ex UMR1027). Her research studies the ageing process, in particular the loss of functions associated with advancing age, with a view to devising national and international prevention programmes. These programmes are backed up by methodological developments. In particular, it is involved in prevention trials in the field of cognitive function loss (GuidAge, MAPT, HATICE, MIND-AD, PRODEMOS). Within the HealthAge IHU, she is responsible for the randomised intervention trial designed to assess the effectiveness of the ICOPE programme in France.
She headed the INSERM U1027-UPS ‘Epidemiology and Public Health Analysis: Risks, Chronic Diseases and Disability’ research unit from 2011 to 2020. She was President of the French Geriatrics and Gerontology Society from 2015 to 2018. She has contributed to more than 300 international articles and book chapters in the field of ageing and Alzheimer’s disease.
Laurent BALARDY is a geriatrician. Since 2021, he has been Head of the Geriatrics and Gerontology Unit at Toulouse University Hospital. He coordinates and develops geriatric internal medicine and oncogeriatric activities at Toulouse University Hospital. He is also responsible for the Oncogeriatrics board of the Toulouse University Cancer Institute and the Regional Oncogeriatrics Unit approved by the French National Cancer Institute. He is involved in developing the ‘Healthy ageing’ programme and is helping to set up the university clinic for healthy longevity within the HealthAge IHU.
Philipe de SOUTO BARRETO is Professor of Gerontology at the University of Toulouse, Director of the Institute on Ageing (Toulouse University Hospital and University of Toulouse), member of the WHO Collaborating Center on Frailty, Clinical & Geroscience Research, and Geriatric Training, and leader of the IHU HealthAge Team “Lifestyle, intrinsic capacity and geroscience”. Professor Barreto’s main field of expertise is on physical activity and exercise during ageing, having participated in the elaboration of international guidelines, task forces and consensus papers on this topic. More recently, he has been actively working on the area of geroscience. Philipe has published more than 250 scientific articles, including in prestigious Journals such as JAMA Int Med or BMJ. Professor Barreto serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging since December 2021.
Mathilde CAVALIER worked for almost 10 years on one of the largest national and European digital health records, the Dossier Pharmaceutique (DP) implemented by the Ordre national des pharmaciens (45 million records, 20,000 pharmacies and 550 health establishments connected, channel for distributing recalls of batches of medicines, etc.). She then took up the post of Director of Strategy and Funding at the Collège des Enseignants en Radiologie de France (French College of Radiology Teachers), where her duties included managing European projects to build up cancer imaging databases. Since 2023, she has been General Secretary of the HealthAge IHU and Director of the Pastel Foundation, the hospital foundation of Toulouse University Hospital.
Cédric DRAY PhD. is an Associate Professor at the University of Toulouse France, specialized in Pharmacology and Physiology. Dr Dray obtained his PhD in 2010 by demonstrating the role of apelin on metabolic diseases. Since 2021, Dr Dray is the leader of a research team at the RESTORE Institute (INSERM/CNRS/EFS/UPS) which is dedicated to the study of ageing mechanisms and gerosciences throught a transdisciplinary innovative approach. In this context, metabolism exibits a crucial role and allows to propose therapeutical and preventive strategies Since 2019, Drs Dray and Pradère co-lead the Nothobranchuis Killifish plateform within the INSPIRE and HealthAge projects.
Nicolas FAZILLEAU, PhD in Immunology in 2004, is a Research Director at Inserm (French National Institute of Health and Medical Research) and heads the Research Unit ‘Toulouse Institute for Infectious and Inflammatory Diseases (Infinity)’ on the Purpan hospital campus. He is a cellular and molecular immunologist with over two decades of experience in the academic field, having worked both in the United States (The Scripps Research Institute, California) and in France (Institut Pasteur Paris and Infinity). He possesses an in-depth understanding of T lymphocyte biology in rodent models and in humans. His research activity is primarily focused on the mechanisms regulating antibody responses during vaccination, ageing, and chronic dysimmune pathologies.
Sophie GUYONNET is a Biologist (PhD, HDR) specialized in Nutrition and Ageing Research, Associate Professor at the IHU HealthAge, Gérontopôle/Toulouse University Hospital Department of Geriatric Medicine, University Toulouse III, CERPOP (Center for Epidemiology and Research in Population Health, UMR1295 INSERM (Ageing Team). She is Responsible for the development of the Gérontopôle Cinical Research programmes, including design and execution of trials, regulatory procedures, budget, timelines, and communicating with key internal and external stakeholders. It field of expertise includes National and European coordination of large multicentric cohort of patients with Alzheimer Disease (REAL.FR study, PLASA study); National coordination of large multicentric preventive trials in the field of neurodegenerative diseases (MAPT, MAPT PLUS, NOLAN); Coordination of human biobanks (MAPT, NOLAN, INSPIRE-T); Nutritional factors, cognition and prevention of neurodegenerative diseases; Nutritional factors and prevention of intrinsic capacity decline; Multidomain approach. Since 2019, She is in charge of the management of the Inspire Bio-resource Research Platform for Healthy Ageing; the main objective of this platform is to build a comprehensive research platform gathering biological, clinical (including imaging) and digital resources that will be explored to identify robust (set of) markers of ageing, age-related diseases and intrinsic capacity evolution. One of the most challenge of the Inspire Platform is the implementation of a Human Translational Research cohort (INSPIRE-T cohort) and animal cohorts in mirror. Since 2024, she is the programme director of the IHU HealthAge on healthy longevity, prevention and gerosciences.
Olivier LAIREZ, MD, PhD, is Professor at the University – Praticien Hospitalier at the University of Toulouse. He is a cardiologist and nuclear physician, and works clinically at the Toulouse University Hospital. After two years at the Institute for Translational and Molecular Imaging at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, he set up the cardiac imaging centre at Toulouse University Hospital. His research focuses on the exploration of cardiomyopathies and myocardial ageing leading to heart failure. He is particularly interested in wild transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis as a model of cardiac ageing. In 2021, he obtained a Master’s degree in Health Economics and Management in Cardiovascular Sciences at the London School of Economics, London, and then took over as Head of Research and Innovation at the Toulouse University Hospital Centre for three years. He is currently vice-president of innovation and partnerships at the University of Toulouse, and heads up translational research at the HealthAge university hospital institute.
Dominique LANGIN, DVM PhD, is director of the Institute of Metabolic and Cardiovascular Diseases (I2MC, Inserm University of Toulouse, France). Following doctoral studies in France, he did a post-doctoral internship at the University of Lund in Sweden and, back to France, embarked on a scientific career at CNRS and Inserm. He now holds a professor position at the University of Toulouse and at the University Hospital of Toulouse. He has coordinated several national and European research projects and obtained a Synergy grant from the European Research Council (ERC) in 2020. He received the Friedrich Wassermann Life Time Achievement Award from the European Association for the Study of Obesity in 2011 and the Labbé Prize from the Academy of Sciences in 2019. In 2014 and 2021, he was appointed senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He has devoted his scientific career to the study of the biology of adipose tissue, obesity and diabetes, with a focus on fatty acid metabolism. He has contributed to about 260 original and 80 review articles (h-index 80 WoS). In IHU HealthAge, Prof. Langin coordinates the interface with the 14 research teams and 6 technological facilities of I2MC and develops a programme on the importance of adipose distribution in ageing-associated metabolic abnormalities.
Alexandre LUCAS, PhD, INSERM Research Engineer, is the founder and head of the We-Met platform. He is a specialist in protein biochemistry. He manages the platform and is responsible for various training courses and developments. He began working in cardiac signalling at INSERM in Chatenay-Malabry in 2005, before joining the I2MC in 2010. He then founded the We-Met platform in 2015.
Angelo PARINI is a cardiologist, Emeritus Professor at the Faculty of Health of Toulouse and a hospital practitioner at the University Hospital of Toulouse. Between 2007 and 2020 he headed the Institute of Metabolic and Cardiovascular Diseases of Toulouse. He is a member of numerous national and international evaluation board. His research activity focuses mainly on the molecular mechanisms responsible for ageing and heart failure. Since 2019, he has been coordinating the implementation and characterization of translational mouse cohorts as part of the INSPIRE project and the HealthAGE IHU.
Yves ROLLAND (MD, PhD) is Professor of Internal Medicine and Geriatrics at the Gérontopôle of Toulouse (France) and he is the Clinical Research Director of the IHU HealthAge dedicated to prevention and geroscience. He has a postgraduate diploma in Rheumatology and in Sports Medicine. He is member of the CERPO Team, UMR1295 (INSERM) at the University of Toulouse (MAINTAIN – MAintain Functions and INTrinsec capacities with Aging: Preventive and Personalized INterventional Research). He is the Editor in chief of the Journal of Nursing Home Research (JNHR). He is the author of more than 400 articles indexed Pubmed including around 80 articles related to Nursing Home care.
Bruno VELLAS is the founder of the HealthAge University Hospital Institute on healthy longevity, prevention and geroscience at the Toulouse Gérontopôle. He is also Head of the Internal Medicine and Geriatrics Department at Toulouse University Hospital. He is a member of INSERM’s UMR 1295 Vieillissement unit. He studied medicine in Toulouse and obtained his Doctorate in Medicine in 1987 and his Doctorate in Science, specialising in Human Physiopathology, in 1990 from Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse. During his year of mobility from 1987 to 1988, he trained in nutrition and ageing at the Clinical Nutrition Laboratory, Faculty of Medicine, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA. His main research interests are clinical trials in Alzheimer’s disease, frailty and geroscience, which have received national, European and international funding. He founded the Toulouse Gérontopôle to develop innovation and research on the elderly.
Since 1987, he has authored or co-authored more than 500 publications in scientific journals with an H: 130 Index, and is a member of the Editorial Board and a reviewer for several major journals. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Albuquerque, NM, USA, and a member of the Scientific board of numerous scientific institutions in France, Europe, Japan and the USA. Since 2016, he has been a full member of the French National Academy of Medicine, an Officer in the Order of the Legion of Honour and an Officer in the Order of the Academic Palms. Between 2009 and 2013, he was President of the IAGG (International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics), an NGO in consultative status with the UN. Since September 2017, he has been Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Frailty, Clinical Research and Training in Geriatrics.
Finally, Bruno VELLAS is behind the INSPIRE programme in the field of geroscience.
Comité mensuel : chercheurs associés
Isabelle ADER is a researcher at INSERM within the RESTORE Institute dedicated to geroscience in Toulouse (UMR 1301-Inserm 5070, University of Toulouse). For many years, she was a member of the executive and scientific board of INSPIRE, and she is currently a member of the management board of IHU HealthAge. Her research focuses on the impact of energy metabolism in maintaining cellular and tissue homeostasis, exploring both ageing and pathologies such as cancer. She has conducted her research on various human cohorts, including MAPT, INSPIRE-T, and NHANES, seeking to establish links between energy metabolism and health trajectories. Her approach spans different scales, from the cell to the whole organism, and extends across different species. Her research, both translational and multidisciplinary, recently led to the discovery that a metabolic signature could predict cognitive decline more than 3 years before the appearance of any clinical signs. Furthermore, she contributed to a study published in 2023, where the use of artificial intelligence allowed distinguishing physiological age from chronological age based on metabolic variables. These recent works have been the subject of several patents, thus paving the way for future specific and personalized clinical monitoring for healthy ageing and all age-related pathologies.
Nicola Coley is an epidemiologist at Toulouse University Hospital, and member of the Ageing team at the Centre for Epidemiology and Research in Population Health (CERPOP) at the University of Toulouse and INSERM (the National Institute for Health and Medical Research). Her research activities focus on healthy ageing, and particularly prevention trials. She has collaborated on various large prevention trials in France (GuidAge, MAPT) and Europe (HATICE, MIND-AD, PRODEMOS). Within the HealthAge IHU, she is leading the Open Science Hub, following on from her experience of coordinating data sharing activities within Toulouse University Hospital for Alzheimer’s and ageing research since 2016. She has published more than 75 scientific articles and book chapters, and regularly serves as an expert evaluator for various international scientific journals and conferences, as well as for national and international grants.
Catarina GOULAO, researcher at the Institut National de la Recherche pour l’Agriculture et l’Environnement (INRAE) in France within the Toulouse School of Economics since 2018. She is in charge of the ‘Public Economics’ group, which aims to bring together researchers working in this field and in particular on the following themes: taxation, social protection, health, education, public goods, externalities, environmental policies, regulation, public services, electoral competition, lobbying, etc. Her recent research interests include public health insurance, chronic non-communicable diseases and prevention of dependency, discrimination in hiring linked to obesity and other health conditions, interactions between public and private providers and the design of the soda tax. She has taken part in a number of funded projects on the evaluation of public health policies, such as the Impact des innovations du secteur agro-alimentaire sur la santé et l’environnement (Impact of innovations in the agri-food sector on health and the environment).
Jean-Marie LOZACHMEUR, research director at CNRS and senior researcher at TSE, has published more than 30 scientific articles in the fields of public economics, health economics and industrial organisation. He was appointed in 2018 by the French Minister of Health and Social Affairs as a scientific expert on healthcare financing, for a period of three years.
Laurent MARTINEZ is a research director at Inserm and currently leads the LiMitAging team at I2MC. He began his career with a major publication on the ectopic localization of mitochondrial ATP synthase (Nature. 2003;421(6918):75-9). He has also collaborated with Professor Alan Tall at Columbia University (New York City, USA) and Nobel laureate in chemistry, John E. Walker, at the University of Cambridge, UK, between 2002 and 2005.Laurent Martinez is a member of several scientific councils, including the scientific commission of Inserm, the scientific council of the University of Toulouse, and the executive board of the IHU HealthAge dedicated to healthy ageing. Additionally, he contributes to the work of the Geroscience Translational Clinical Task Force (USA) and serves as associate editor for the journal Atherosclerosis.His team, specializing in research on metabolic and cardiovascular pathologies and healthy ageing, has earned Laurent Martinez several distinctions, including the Lavoisier Prize (2001), EMBO (2004), and Inserm Avenir (2006) awards. With his team, he recently demonstrated that targeting the activity of the adipocyte receptor P2Y13 is a promising strategy against age-related metabolic disorders, and he was the first to identify the circulating form of the mitochondrial protein IF1 as a biomarker in the context of cardiometabolic diseases and ageing.
Jean Philippe PRADERE is an INSERM researcher at the RESTORE Institute (CNRS UMR5070- INSERM U1301). He is an independent PI in the ‘METABOLINK’ group, mainly known for his work on the liver, macrophages and metabolic disorders, but he has also developed projects at the crossroads between metabolism and ageing using mouse and fish models. Since 2019, as part of the INSPIRE project to study ageing and metabolism, co-led with Dr. Cédric Dray, they have been behind the establishment of a colony of African turquoise fish or Nothobranchius furzeri at the RESTORE institute in Toulouse, which to date remains the only colony in France, with the aim of studying ageing. As the vertebrate with the shortest lifespan in captivity (4-6 months), the killifish is a model organism that is now a major asset for the HealthAge IHU.
Laure ROUCH (PharmD, PhD, HDR) is an Epidemiologist (PhD, HDR) and Senior Lecturer – Hospital Practitioner at the IHU HealthAge, Toulouse, France, specifically at the CERPOP, Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health Research, UMR 1295 INSERM University of Toulouse, Ageing Team, MAINTAIN Axis Maintaining functions and intrinsic capacities with ageing: preventive and personalised intervention research. In addition to her research activities, she works as a Clinical Pharmacist (PharmD) at the Gérontopôle of the Toulouse University Hospital (clinical activity) and at the Clinical Pharmacy Department of the Toulouse Faculty of Health (teaching activity). Her post-doctorate at the University of California, San Francisco, USA, laid the foundations for international collaborative research partnerships. Over the last ten years, she has focused on identifying potentially modifiable risk factors, particularly cardiovascular, for neurocognitive disorders, with a view to prevention. More recently, she has broadened her field of research to include the biology of ageing, geroscience and healthy longevity. As part of the HealthAge IHU, she is principal investigator of the INSPIRE-OMICS translational research project. The main aim of this work is to develop multi-omics (epigenomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, proteomics) biological clocks of intrinsic capacity and organ-specific ageing. Early identification of individuals with accelerated ageing is essential for interventional preventive and personalised medicine to promote healthy longevity.
Maria Eugenia Soto Martin, MD, PhD, is head of the Clinical & Research Alzheimer disease Center of the Toulous university hospital. She is a member of the Research Ageing Team, CERPOP (UMR 1295), Axe MAINTAIN (MAintain Functions and INTrinsec capacities with Ageing: Preventive and Personalized INterventional Research. Since 2012 he is the medical head of the Ageing and Disability Prevention Team of the Gérontopôle, a WHO-collaborating centre for Frailty, Clinical Research and Geriatric Training. Currently, she leads with Prof Bruno Vellas the implementation of ICOPE WHO programme in the region of Occitanie in France. Recently she has been missioned by the Health, Labor and Solidarity French ministry as a « qualified person” in order to elaborate the national governmental strategy for neurodegenerative diseases for 2024-2028.Currently she is member of the Management Board of IHU HealthAge.
Sandrine SOURDET is a doctor specialising in geriatrics. After completing her clinical training in an acute Alzheimer’s unit at the Toulouse University Hospital Centre (CHU), she spent a year in the United States as part of a research team working on ageing. On her return to France, she worked in geriatric follow-up and rehabilitation care at the Garonne Hospital. Since 2011, she has been medical director of the first frailty day hospital in France: the frailty assessment and dependency prevention day hospital at Toulouse University Hospital. Her multi-professional team works to prevent or delay the onset of dependency among the elderly.
