The Keystone Program in Epigenetics and Progenitor Cell

Fabrice J. Roegiers, Ph.D.
Co-Leader, Keystone Program in Epigenetics and Progenitor Cell

Dr. Fabrice J. Roegiers, a developmental biologist, studies the mechanisms that control the behavior of progenitor cells in early development and how these mechanisms affect the outcome of a cell’s purpose in an organism.  Misregulation of these mechanisms is frequently linked to birth defects or cancer.

He uses the fruit fly as a laboratory model to examine how asymmetric segregation of the protein Numb generates different cell types and leads to different cell fates in the fly’s nervous system.  His studies of how nervous tissue forms in fruit flies could provide clues about the common mechanisms that underlie cell fate specification in other organisms, including humans.

Before joining Fox Chase in 2005, Roegiers was a postdoctoral fellow in the department of physiology and biochemistry at the University of California at San Francisco and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.  While completing his postdoctoral training, Roegiers also worked as a scientific advisor at the Exploratorium, a museum of science, art and human perception in San Francisco.

Roegiers earned his bachelor’s degree in zoology from the University of California at Davis in 1993 and his Ph.D. from the Université de Nice-Sophia in Antipolis, France, in 1999.

He is the co-author of a number of peer-reviewed research papers.  He has also made presentations at conferences and seminars across the United States and in Switzerland.