Jean Francois ARNAL, MD, PhD (Paris University), Professor of Medical Physiology (2000-present), Faculty of medicine, University of Toulouse, France, Senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France, Past-Head of a research team at INSERM Unit 1048.
Jean Francois ARNAL studied medicine at the University of Toulouse and was then resident in cardiology in Paris (interne des Hopitaux de Paris). He then received his PhD on the role of nitric oxide in hypertension and heart failure in 1990-3 from the University of Paris (mentor Dr JB Michel). Jean Francois ARNAL is specialist on vascular physiology and pathology and sex hormones. His field of expertise was initially the communications in vascular pathophysiology, in particular the renin-angiotensin system (mentors JB Michel, P Corvol, J Menard, INSERM Paris), nitric oxide and endothelial NO synthase (DG Harrison, Emory University, Atlanta GA, USA).
These two last decades, he focused on estrogens and estrogens receptors (ER), in collaboration with the most acknowledged specialists in this field (P. Chambon, K. Korach, J and B Katzenellengogen,…). His lab contributed to describe for the first time the respective roles of nuclear and membrane ER alpha thanks to the generation of transgenic mice targeting activating functions AF1 or AF2 and the membrane actions of ER alpha, in collaboration with the Mouse Clinic in Strasbourg. In collaboration with JM Foidart, his group also proposed that the specificity of action of estetrol, an estrogen synthetized by the fetal liver, was due to the uncoupling of the nuclear and membrane actions of ER alpha, accounting for some of its estrogenic specificities. He contributed to more than 200 original papers or review articles. He received several prices these last years.
This topic and collaborative work was summarized in « Estrogen receptors and endothelium ». Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol 30: 1506-1512, 2010. Arnal JF, et al. and more recently in « Membrane and Nuclear Estrogen Receptor alpha actions: From Tissue Specificity to Medical Implications » in Physiological Reviews 2017, 97 : 1045-1087.