Inserm Prize 2025: Mohamed-Ali Hakimi, Winner of the Research Prize
24 November 2025
On Thursday, November 27, Inserm will celebrate those who advance health research by presenting its annual awards. The work of the five scientists honored in this 2025 edition reflects the usefulness and innovative nature of the research conducted at Inserm. Among the winners is Mohamed-Ali Hakimi, head of the Toxoplasmosis & Host-Parasite Coevolution team at the Institute for Advanced Biosciences.
“The careers of the 2025 award winners once again demonstrate the excellence of research at Inserm, where interdisciplinarity and team synergy transform research into major innovations and concrete advances for patients, says Prof. Didier Samuel, CEO of Inserm. Their work, marked by constant scientific rigor, embodies the Institute's ambition: to advance the health of all our fellow citizens and provide answers to current and future medical and societal challenges."
Mohamed-Ali Hakimi, Research Award Winner
Inserm Research Director and head of the Toxoplasmosis & Host-Parasite Coevolution team at the Institute for Advanced Biosciences (Inserm/CNRS/Grenoble Alpes University), Mohamed-Ali Hakimi explores the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms of Toxoplasma gondii, the parasite responsible for toxoplasmosis.
After an international multidisciplinary career, Mohamed-Ali Hakimi turned his attention to parasitology. He joined Inserm in 2004, heading up an ATIP-Avenir team focusing on toxoplasmosis.
The parasite Toxoplasma gondii has a complex life cycle. Transmitted to humans through food or contact with the feces of an infected cat, it infects about one-third of the population. While symptoms are mild most of the time, the effects can be severe in immunocompromised individuals or in fetuses when pregnant women are infected.
Mohamed-Ali Hakimi and his team have deciphered the epigenetic mechanisms that enable the parasite to alternate between sexual and asexual forms and identified the key protein behind this phenomenon. These discoveries should enable the identification of new molecules targeting proteins present in the sexual and infectious form of the parasite in cats, in order to combat the transmission of toxoplasmosis to humans.
The Inserm Awards ceremony will be broadcast live from the Collège de France on Thursday, November 27, 2025, starting at 6:30 p.m.: watch the ceremony