Professor Dr Lars French

Lars French is distinguished for numerous important contributions to the understanding of the mechanisms of skin disease. The majority of these were made at the University of Geneva where he trained and subsequently became Louis-Jeantet professor of medicine. Significant contributions were also made when he was visiting professor at the Department of Dermatology of the University of Pennsylvania (1999-2000), and since 2006 in his role as chairman of the Department of Dermatology at the University Hospital of Zürich. He made substantial contributions to research in cutaneous oncology, but is best known for his seminal work on the severe adverse drug reaction toxic epidermal necrolysis. He contributed to the understanding of the mechanism of cell death that causes the disease and has proposed a novel therapeutic strategy that is the object of clinical trials.