Director of Research INSERM
U1179 UVSQ-INSERM
Biothérapies des Maladies du Système Neuromusculaire
UFR des sciences de la santé Simone Veil
University of Versailles saint Quentin en Yvelines
2 Avenue de la source de la bièvre
78180 Montigny le bretonneux
FRANCE
E-mail : aurelie.goyenvalle@uvsq.fr

Aurélie Goyenvalle obtained her PhD in Virology at the University of Paris VII in 2006 from her work at Genethon in France, where she developed an exon-skipping gene therapy strategy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) using AAV vectors encoding U7snRNA constructs carrying antisense sequences. She then joined Pr. Kay Davies’ laboratory at the University of Oxford as a post-doctoral scientist supported by an EMBO fellowship. During her postdoc in Oxford and subsequent position at the Medical Research Council (MRC), she developed various splicing modulation approaches for neuromuscular and neurodegenerative diseases, including peptide-conjugated antisense oligonucleotides. In 2011, she joined the Institute of Myology in Paris to investigate splice switching approaches using novel antisense oligonucleotides and in 2012, she was awarded a Chair of Excellence program to establish her own group at the University of Versailles to develop novel RNA based technology for the treatment of neuromuscular diseases. She notably demonstrated the therapeutic potential of a novel class of AONs made of tricyclo-DNA (tcDNA), which displays unique pharmacological properties and unprecedented uptake in many tissues after systemic administration.

In 2015, Aurélie was appointed a permanent research scientist at INSERM and in 2020 Director of Research to pursue this line of research. Aurélie Goyenvalle is currently directing the laboratory Biotherapies for neuromuscular diseases at the University of Versailles (UMR 1179) focused on gene and antisense therapies for the treatment of neuromuscular disorders. Aurélie received two prestigious awards from the Oligonucleotide Therapeutic Society: the Dr. Alan M. Gewirtz Memorial Scholarship Award in 2011 and the Mary Ann Liebert Publishers, Inc. Young Investigator Award in 2016. Aurélie also actively participated in building networks that promote the application of oligonucleotide technology in Europe. As a founding member and management committee member of the European networks “Networking towards clinical application of antisense-mediated exon skipping” (COST Action BM1207) and “Delivery of Antisense RNA therapeutics”