After high school Philippe attended the Lycee Pothier in Orléans, France, to prepare for the entrance examination for the french Engineering Schools. He then studied for 3 years at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Mulhouse (ENSCMu), the oldest chemical engineering school in France, where he got a Chemical Engineer diploma, as well as a pre-research diploma (DEA, equivalent to a PhD qualifying degree) in physical chemistry.

He then accomplished his military service as a scientist, and spent 12 months with Prof. Mir-Wais Hosseini at the Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg, France, where he worked on the synthesis of silylated crown-ethers.

Having realised at that point that his main interest lied at the interface between chemistry and biology he decided to study for a PhD with Prof. Guy Ourisson at the Louis Pasteur University. His research project was focused on the use of phospholipidic photoactivable probes to study the topography of a membrane protein, glycophorin A. The structure determination of membrane proteins is known to be very difficult - they are for example not easily amenable to crystallisation - because of their amphiphilic characteristics.

After receiving his Ph.D. in Bioorganic Chemistry, Philippe moved to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, USA, to work with Prof. Glenn D. Prestwich in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry as a postdoctoral associate for 3 years. His research was focused on the study of an essential step in the terpene biosynthesis, namely the enzymatic cyclisation of squalene and oxidosqualene by oxidosqualene cyclase and squalene:hopene cyclase.

His current research in the Davis Group in collaboration with Glycoform is focused on the development of new methodologies for glycoprotein synthesis and new drug delivery systems.

Last update (18-07-04): Philippe now works for Glycoform Limited.