Bernard Meunier is CNRS Director of Research Emeritus (exceptional grade) at the CNRS Coordination Chemistry Laboratory in Toulouse and Distinguished Professor in the Chemistry Department of Guangdong University of Technology in Guangzhou, China.
After a post-graduate thesis with Robert Corriu at the University of Montpellier (November 1971) on the catalytic activation of Grignard reagents, and a position as assistant delegate at the Montpellier Chemistry IUT, Bernard Meunier joined the CNRS as a research trainee in 1973. He holds a PhD from the University of Paris XI-Orsay (June 1977), prepared with Hugh Felkin at the CNRS Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles in Gif-sur-Yvette, on inorganomagnesiums. After two years devoted to crystallography, including one as a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford University (1977-1978), he decided to return to experimental chemistry, and in 1979 joined the CNRS coordination chemistry laboratory in Toulouse to study oxidation chemistry. He devoted himself to the study of oxygen or electron atom transfers induced by transition metals, enabling the modeling of metalloenzymes (biomimetic oxidations) in the fields of chemistry and biology. Since his arrival in Toulouse, he has also been collaborating with Claude Paoletti on the study of antitumor derivatives of ellipticine.
Bernard Meunier has worked in fields as varied as the use of bleach and potassium monopersulfate as oxygen atom donors in catalytic epoxidation and hydroxylation reactions, and the oxidation of anticancer drugs using peroxidases, dNA cutting with bleomycin or metalloporphyrins, catalytic oxidation of chlorinated aromatics, the mechanism of action of antimalarial drugs and the preparation of new molecules active against chloroquine-resistant strains. He has used his in-depth understanding of the mechanisms of oxidation phenomena to tackle a wide range of scientific topics: modeling of heme enzymes (cytochrome P-450, peroxidases, catalase and chloroperoxidase), artificial endonucleases (oxidative DNA cleavage, DNA "pseudo-hydrolysis") and biomimetic catalysts for pollutant oxidation; mechanism of action of anti-cancer or anti-malarial drugs and creation of drug candidates for the treatment of parasitic diseases (malaria and bilharzia) and a neurodegenerative disease (Alzheimer's).
