Marc Tessier-Lavigne

Tessier-Lavigne was born in Trenton, Ontario, Canada. Aged seven to 17, he grew up in Europe where his father was serving with NATO as part of the Canadian Armed Forces. He was the first in his family to attend university.

In 1980, Tessier-Lavigne earned a BSc in physics from McGill University; in 1982, he took a BA in philosophy and physiology from New College, Oxford; in 1987, he gained a DPhil in physiology from University College London.

Tessier-Lavigne attended Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, where he "first encountered the nervous system and fell in love with it" and graduated with first-class honors. His doctoral advisor at University College London was David Attwell. Tessier-Lavigne did postdoctoral research at the MRC Developmental Neurobiology Unit at University College London in 1987 and at the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University with Thomas Jessell from 1987 to 1991.

Early career: UCSF, Stanford and Genentech

Tessier-Lavigne started his career at the University of California, San Francisco, from 1991 to 2001, and was soon noted for research into the mechanisms of brain wiring during embryonic development. He was a professor of biological sciences at Stanford University from 2001 to 2003. Genentech hired him in 2003 as its senior vice president of Research Drug Discovery. He cited the firm's "potential to create breakthrough therapies for unmet medical needs" as his reason for leaving academia. His brain-development research at Genentech also suggested a possible mechanism relevant to neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's disease. A principal paper from that work, a 2009 study in Nature, was retracted in 2023 after subsequent research showed several of its central conclusions were incorrect and image anomalies were identified.

Xaira Therapeutics

On April 23, 2024, it was announced that Tessier-Lavigne would become CEO of the AI drug-discovery startup Xaira Therapeutics, of which he is a co-founder and chair.

Tessier-Lavigne met his wife, Mary Hynes, while he was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. They have three children.

Research misconduct investigation and resignation

In November 2022, Stanford announced that its Board of Trustees would oversee an examination of Tessier-Lavigne's publications, after reporting alleged that neurobiology papers he had co-authored contained manipulated images. Microbiologist Elisabeth Bik raised concerns about four papers (in such journals as Science and Nature) co-authored by Tessier-Lavigne, findings confirmed by The Stanford Daily. In February 2023, Tessier-Lavigne declared allegations that he had intentionally falsified his work "utterly false".

On July 19, 2023, the review committee released its report, finding that Tessier-Lavigne "failed to decisively and forthrightly correct mistakes in the scientific record" created by work he had co-authored. The committee found that "in at least four of the five papers [examined], there was apparent manipulation of research data by others", but found "no evidence that Tessier-Lavigne himself manipulated data... nor that he knew about manipulation at the time". The report also criticized the "unusual frequency of manipulation of research data and/or substandard scientific practices from different people, at different times, and in labs overseen by Dr. Tessier-Lavigne at different institutions". It further found that Tessier-Lavigne had notified the journal Science after he was initially informed about the errors in 2015; its editor-in-chief admitted that, due to an internal error, it had failed to publish the corrections for two papers.

Upon the report's release, Tessier-Lavigne announced his resignation as president, effective August 31, 2023, as well as his retraction or correction of five scientific papers.