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E-mail: Louis-Charles.Fortier@USherbrooke.ca
Phone: 819 821-8000 ext 75322
Fax: 819 820-6831

http://labolcf.webs.com/

Public health is more than ever a matter of concern worldwide. Bacterial pathogens are continuously evolving, and are increasingly resistant to most antibiotics. One such pathogen is Clostridium difficile, now ranked on top of the list of the most problematic and deadly pathogens in hospital settings. New hypervirulent and multi-drug resistant strains ofC. difficile have recently emerged and caused severe outbreaks in North Americaand Europe.

Louis-Charles Fortier is a young microbiologist dedicated to the study of C. difficile and is currently one of the very few Canadian specialists studying bacteriophages, i.e. viruses infecting bacteria. His research is currently focused on trying to understand the role played by bacteriophages in the evolution and virulence of C. difficile. He is also interested in developing novel phage-based therapeutic agents to fight C. difficile infections.

Pr. Fortier’s laboratory offers an unique platform and environment to study anaerobic pathogens and bacteriophages and has access to state-of-the-art equipments and facilities to perform various microbiology, molecular biology and biochemistry studies, in addition to an animal facility to conduct in vivo experiments using animal models of C. difficile infections.

•  Pr Fortier has published important papers on bacteriophages (Fortier & Moineau, Methods Mol. Biol., 2009; Fortier & Moineau, Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 2007; Fortier et al., J. Bacteriol., 2006), on anti-phage mechanisms (Haarber et al., Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 2008; Fortier et al., J. Bacteriol. 2005), as well as on toxins of C. difficile(Matte et al., Infect. Immun. 2009).
• Since 2007, Pr. Fortier has obtained operating and equipment grants from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI-Leaders program), the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR startup fund-Novel alternatives to antibiotics strategic initiative), from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC-discovery grant, and research tools and instruments), and from Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, for an average of $200,000/year. He is also a research scholar from the Fonds de la Recherche en Santé du Québec (FRSQ).

• Expert on the biology of bacteriophages
• Expert on the biology of C difficiel, and the study of virulence characteristics such as toxin production and sporulation.