Exclusively: The Per Fumum Endowment Fund has signed a three-year partnership with the Institut Pasteur in support of the fight against COVID-19, specifically its effect on our sense of smell.
Known as anosmia, this symptom causing a loss of sense of smell will be studied under the direction of Professor Pierre-Marie Lledo at the Institut Pasteur as of July 2020. The research could shed new light on the origin of the disease by identifying premature infectious and immune mechanisms which could become targets for new therapeutic agents.
Both anosmia and ageusia (loss of taste) demonstrate the ability of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) to infect the olfactory sensory neurons inside the nasal cavity. The virus may use this point of entry to penetrate the central nervous system and infect respiratory control centres.
This is the working hypothesis which the Perception and Memory Laboratory, made up of around twenty researchers, engineers, clinicians and students and led by Professor Lledo, is seeking to test.
A brilliant, internationally recognised scientist passionate about Neuroscience, his multiple-award winning research strives to better understand how the brain works.
- Member of the New York Academy of Sciences
- Head of the Perception and Memory Laboratory at the Institut Pasteur in Paris
- Director of the Genes, Synapses and Cognition Unit at the French Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS)
- Director of the Neuroscience Teaching Graduate Program at the Institut Pasteur
- Visiting Professor at Harvard University in Boston
- Columnist for the French daily newspaper Les Echos
- Member of the French Advertising Ethics Committee (CEP)
Professor Pierre-Marie LLEDO
Professor Lledo is delighted to collaborate with the Per Fumum Endowment Fund, especially given how rare it is for patronage to be focused specifically on supporting fragrance and smell-related research.
“The scent-diffusing tools and molecules developed precisely for this study guarantee us unprecedented research conditions for the subject.”
For Stéphanie Prinet Morou, Executive Director of the Per Fumum Endowment Fund, joining forces with the Institut Pasteur seemed like an obvious choice: “Everyone felt shaken and powerless when the news of this global disease hit, but we have made a sincere commitment to our ambition to support Research, and are lucky to benefit from the expertise of Mr Francis Kurkdjian, the Fund’s founder, when it comes to fragrance and smell.
Partnering with the Institut Pasteur to help put together a research team dedicated to fighting COVID-19 for the common good was one of our first decisions. It was a natural move.”
Other supported projects
