Julien Lafrance-Vanasse

Timeline

1. 2007–2011

   Biochemistry degrees in Montréal

   At the Département de biochimie et médecine moléculaire of the Université de Montréal, he earns a master's degree in biochemistry in April 2007 under advisor Jurgen Sygusch for research on fructose-1,6-bisphosphate aldolase from Leishmania mexicana. He completes his doctorate in biochemistry there in December 2011 under advisors James G. Omichinski and Jurgen Sygusch with a thesis on interactions between TFIIH and the DNA-repair machinery.

2. 2012–2013

   DNA repair structures in Montréal

   At the Département de Biochimie of the Université de Montréal, he is first author of a 2012 Nucleic Acids Research paper on the interaction between the Tfb1 subunit of TFIIH and the DNA-repair factor Rad2. In 2013, he is first author of a second Nucleic Acids Research paper showing that Rad4 competes with Rad2 for binding to Tfb1.

3. 2014–2015

   Reviews with John Tainer

   In the Life Science Division in Berkeley, he coauthors a 2014 review with Susan E. Tsutakawa and John A. Tainer on how DNA repair nucleases identify damage before they cut. With Gareth J. Williams and Tainer in 2015, he is first author of a review on the dynamics and flexibility of the Mre11-Rad50-Nbs1 complex, which acts in the first steps of DNA double strand break repair.

4. 2015–2019

   Theravance Biopharma and Genentech

   From November 2015 to June 2016, he works at Theravance Biopharma US, and in July 2016 he joins Genentech, where he serves as a senior scientific researcher and works in its Department of Protein Chemistry. He coauthors a November 2018 Scientific Reports study of endogenous tau fragmentation in Alzheimer's disease progression. A 2019 mAbs study that he coauthors evaluates an in vitro FcRn-dependent transcytosis assay for antibody clearance across 53 monoclonal antibodies, including 30 marketed drugs.

5. October 2022

   Pareto-compositional protein sequence models

   In October 2022, he coauthors an arXiv preprint introducing a Pareto-compositional energy-based model (pcEBM) for protein sequence sampling and optimization. The framework uses multiple gradient descent to sample new protein designs that adhere to constraints while optimizing distinct properties.

6. 2023

   AbDiffuser and walk-jump sampling

   He coauthors "Protein Design with Guided Discrete Diffusion" in 2023, reporting a 99% expression rate and a 40% binding rate in exploratory in vitro experiments, and in June 2023 he is among the authors of the arXiv preprint of "Protein Discovery with Discrete Walk-Jump Sampling". He also coauthors AbDiffuser, a diffusion model that generates antibody 3D structures and sequences and appears at NeurIPS 2023; in laboratory tests, all 16 HER2 antibodies it discovers are expressed at high levels and 57.1% of the selected designs are tight binders.

7. 2024

   An ICLR Outstanding Paper

   "Protein Discovery with Discrete Walk-Jump Sampling", which lists him among its 13 authors, receives an Outstanding Paper award at ICLR 2024. In the laboratory, 97-100% of the antibody samples it generates are expressed and purified, and 70% of functional designs show equal or improved binding affinity compared to known functional antibodies.

8. May 2025

   Antibodies across the blood-brain barrier

   In May 2025, he is an equal-contribution co-first author, from Genentech's Department of Protein Chemistry, of a Nature Communications paper on using the neonatal Fc receptor (FcRn) to carry antibodies across the blood-brain barrier. Engineering the Fc region to bind FcRn at neutral pH improves brain penetration, brain target engagement and activity of systemically administered antibodies in mice and non-human primates.