Patrice D. Cani is full professor of Physiology, Metabolism and Nutrition and leading a research team at the Louvain Drug Research Institute (LDRI) of the University of Louvain (UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium). He is honorary research director from the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (FRS-FNRS) and WELRI (WELBIO) investigator. After a B.Sc. degree in dietetics he joined the Faculty of Medicine of UCLouvain where he received a M.Sc. in Nutrition, another M.Sc. in Health Sciences, and a PhD in Biomedical Sciences (physiology, metabolism and nutrition).

He is recipient of prestigious grants such as two ERC grants (Starting Grant ENIGMO 2013, PoC ERC grant Microbes4U 2016). He received the prize “Baillet Latour Grant for Medical Research” (2015), the “International Prize of Physiology Lucien Dautrebande” (2016), the "Award for Excellence in Biomedical Research and Creativity" from the joint scientific committee of the Academies of Medicine of Belgium and France, and the Council of the JA DeSève Research Chair of Québec (2019), Prize for Biomedical Research (The AstraZeneca Foundation & KAGB/ARMB) (2022).

He has been elevated at the rank of Officer of the Walloon Merit (O.M.W.) and elected as member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium since 2016. He also received the Bauchau Chair at UNamur (2016) and the Francqui Chair at ULiège (2017).

In 2007, he published the discovery of the concept of metabolic endotoxemia, and more recently, he discovered the beneficial role of the bacteria Akkermansia muciniphila on obesity and cardiometabolic risk factors. More recently, he contributed to the identification of a novel bacterium, Dysosmobacter welbionis, impacting on glucose metabolism, inflammation and cancer. His main research interests are the investigation of interactions between gut microbes and host in the context of obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiometabolic disorders and cancer.

He is author/co-author of more than 390 scientific research publications, reviews and book chapters and ranked in the top 1% world-class researcher selected for his exceptional research performance and citations in the world (source Clarivate), h-index 116 and cited more than 68 500 times (Scopus, January 2025).

His motto is : “In Gut We Trust”.

Specialized in physiology, molecular metabolism and nutrition, he is at the basis of various discoveries that have highlighted the roles of the intestinal microbiota (i.e. intestinal bacteria or intestinal flora) in the development of diseases associated with overweight and obesity such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases but also certain cancers. 

In 2007, he was the first with his colleague Professor R. Burcelin to publish the concept of “metabolic endotoxemia” demonstrating that during obesity and type 2 diabetes certain molecules (bacterial endotoxins) pass through the intestine (leaky gut) to trigger low-grade inflammation and insulin resistance (prediabetes). He was also the first to discover that a diet high in saturated fat altered the composition of the gut microbiota and increased gut permeability.

In addition to these discoveries, he studied the role of prebiotics on health (work that he began in the early 2000s with Professor Marcel Roberfroid and Professor Nathalie Delzenne). Thanks to his research on prebiotics, he then discovered the roles of a very particular bacterium called Akkermansia muciniphila. This intestinal bacterium was recently isolated from the human intestine. Patrice D. Cani and his team were have discovered that this bacterium had beneficial effects on health, by strengthening the intestinal barrier, decreasing body weight and fat mass gain while decreasing insulin resistance and diabetes (see Everard et al. PNAS 2013, or for review Cani et al Nature Reviews Gastroenterology and Hepatology 2022). In less than 10 years, he moved from a discovery made in laboratory animals to a demonstration of efficacy in humans : the so called "bench to bedside". 

In addition to his work on Akkermansia, he discovered that the intestinal microbiota and certain bacteria were in communication with our human cells through various lipid molecules (bioactive lipids) including the endocannabinoid system. Recently, Professor Patrice D. Cani and Dr. Tiphaine Le Roy discovered a new bacterium, of a completely new genus and isolated from the human intestine. They decided to call this bacterium Dysosmobacter welbionis and its name comes from the Greek, Dysosmos (peculiar smell) and bacter (bacterium), the name of the species welbionis comes from the fact that the bacterium was isolated within the framework of the WELBIO project financed by the Walloon region.

Together with Dr. E. Moens de Hase, they discovered that this bacterium was present in the intestine of the general population and is less present in the intestine of obese and type 2 diabetic subjects. The administration of this bacterium improves the health of obese and diabetic mice according to the experiments recent and published in the international journal GUT (Le Roy*, Moens de Hase* et al GUT 2022). They also found that Dysosmobacter welbionis produced specific bioactive lipids acting on inflammation and brown adipose tissues (E. Moens de Hase, C. Petitfils et al J Lipid Research 2023) and predicted response to prebiotic-induced decreased BMI in humans (E. Moens de Hase et al Diabetologia 2024).

Patrice D. Cani has been invited to write numerous opinion papers and reviews in prestigious journals such as Nature Reviews Endocrinology, Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology, Nature Metabolism, Science, GUT, ...

Patrice D. Cani is currently investigating the role of gut microbes in the context of different diseases including breast cancer using both preclinical and clinical studies. Together with Prof. Bénédicte Jordan they discovered that nutritional obesity contributes to stimulate both the growth and the metastasis development in triple negative breast cancers. The molecular mechanisms are under investigation.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=cani+pd&sort=date