At the 2025 Francophone Virology Conference, the French Agency for Research on Emerging Infectious Diseases (ANRS MIE) and the French Society for Virology (SFV) awarded one of their three thesis prizes in basic research on emerging and re-emerging viruses to Quentin Durieux Trouilleton, a young researcher at IBS.
Quentin was recognized for his PhD thesis entitled “Structural and functional analysis of Bunyavirus replication and transcription”, defended on October 18, 2024 at IBS under the supervision of Hélène Malet and Guy Schoehn. His work focused in particular on two hantaviruses belonging to the order Bunyavirales.
His research led, for the first time, to the determination of the complete structure of the Hantaan virus polymerase, an enzyme essential for viral replication. This major breakthrough also revealed a previously unknown inactive state of the polymerase in the absence of viral RNA, as well as a transition mechanism toward an active state involving a movement within the catalytic site that had never been observed before (learn more in this interview from ANRS).
These discoveries provide new information and new possibilities in the development of antivirals targeting hantaviruses, at a time when no approved treatment or vaccine against bunyaviruses is currently available.