Farida Djouad

Farida Djouad, received her PhD on Biology and Health from Montpellier University, France, in 2005. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH/NIAMS), Bethesda, in Dr Tuan’s laboratory in the field of mesenchymal stem cells and cartilage engineering. Since 2013, she is an Inserm senior scientist (Inserm U1183) and the head of the group “Stem cells, blastema and regeneration” at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine and Biotherapy, Montpellier, France. She pioneered research into the immunoregulatory properties of mesenchymal stem cells. This discovery has, currently, a tremendous impact on clinical trials using mesenchymal stem cells and made her an internationally recognized researcher in the field. In 2011, she obtained the funding “Chercheur d’Avenir” from the Languedoc-Roussillon governing body. Since, she has provided a significant contribution to the understanding of the in vitro and in vivo mechanisms involved in mesenchymal stem cell immunosuppressive properties and therapeutic potential in osteoarticular diseases. Currently, her groups aims at deciphering the basis of the pathological and permissive dialogue between stem cells and immune cells in osteoarticular diseases and epimorphic regeneration, respectively.