Charles M. Lapière, 1931–2007

Abstract

Basic Science Section Editor for Wound Repair and Regeneration It is with a profound sadness that we learned that Charles M. Lapière, Emeritus Professor of Dermatology at the University of Liège, Belgium, passed away this November 8th, 2007. All of his career, Charles Lapière has simultaneously been a researcher, a clinician, and a teacher. This triple role is one of the very remarkable features of his curriculum. Another feature, even more remarkable, is the extremely successful and original scientific achievements of Charles Lapière in connective tissue biology. The starting point for Charles Lapière in the research field can be tracked to the 1950s when he was still a medical student investigating the reactivity of sebaceous glands to steroid hormones. After obtaining the MD degree in 1956, Charles Lapière conducted research activities in parallel with clinical duties and was qualified as Internist in 1961. At that time, he joined the Laboratory of Jerome Gross at the prestigious Harvard Medical School at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. There, his work as a young research fellow led to the discovery of an enzyme, the animal collagenase now called matrix metalloproteinase-1 (MMP1), a real breakthrough that opened a new field of research, the matrix metalloproteinases that are now the topic of more than 30,000 publications. Upon his return from the United States to Belgium in 1963, he created a clinical and fundamental research unit interested in bone and skin collagen metabolism. After several stays as Visiting Professor at Harvard Medical School and the Hôpitaux de Paris, Charles Lapière was nominated Professor of Dermatology and Chairman, at the University of Liège in 1970. As a dermatologist and a fundamental scientist his curiosity was triggered by a disease called dermatosparaxis affecting a Belgian strain of cattle. The animals suffered from an extreme fragility of the skin. Thanks to the advanced technologies he had developed in his laboratory, analyses of the skin of these animals rapidly provided the groundwork for a double milestone: the discovery of collagen precursors and, in the affected animals, the lack of activity of a specific enzyme, the procollagen peptidase, which excises the aminoterminal peptide of procollagen. This major advance in the understanding of procollagen processing was the first demonstration of a genetic disease affecting collagen. It took more than 20 years and hundreds of analyses of skin biopsies to identify the same disease in humans, the Ehlers–Danlos type VII C in 1992, followed in 1997 by the cloning of the gene coding for the procollagen peptidase, now called ADAMTS-2, and the characterization of the genetic mutations responsible for inactivity of the enzyme. Recognizing the tremendous potential of the technical developments in cell biology, Charles Lapière was one of the first to show in 1984 that the extracellular matrix transfers mechanical information to cells and represents a main regulatory element of cell behavior in vitro and in vivo. These new concepts had a large impact on the development of artificial skin models. The leadership of Charles Lapière in this field has allowed him to be the coordinator and to participate in several programs of the European Community and, since 1995, in NASA/ESA space biology experiments to investigate microgravity-induced health disorders. The exciting developments in clinical and fundamental research that have occurred over the years in the laboratory of Charles Lapière have attracted many young researchers, clinicians and basic scientists, leading to more than 35 doctoral and “aggregation” theses. The scientific and medical activity of Charles Lapière has allowed him to participate, since 1965, in the development of modern Dermatology in Europe. He has been actively involved in the founding of the European Society for Dermatological Research of which he has been Secretary and an honorary member. He was granted the same title by the American Society for Investigative Dermatology and several other societies of Dermatology in Europe and in the United States. He was a founding member and the first President of the European Tissue Repair Society in 1989. He holds many Belgian and international honorific distinctions and was Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Cologne. Beyond his busy academic and scientific activities, Charles Lapière had hobbies in relation with what he loved above all, nature, animals, good wines, hunting, dry-fly fishing, tennis and horticulture, taking care of a huge kitchen-garden and of a wonderful collection of orchids. Charles Lapière leaves behind the memory of a man of action, with a creative mind and a profound intellectual curiosity and the token of his warmest and most friendly personality.