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The European Patent Office has just revealed its prize list: Claude Grison is the winner of the European Inventor of the Year 2022 Award in the “Research” category for her work on the depollution of industrial sites by plants.
Claude Grison, director of ecological innovations at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), has developed methods to decontaminate soil and water using plants. Better still, the metals recovered in this way are used as “green” catalysts for the synthesis of medicines and cosmetics.
In 2005, she discovered the functioning of an enzyme important in the resistance of bacteria to antibiotics. Her turn towards ecology, a “risky bet” that she made in 2008, was inspired by four of her students who came to her for help in preparing a subject on depollution by plants. The curious nature of this environmentally conscious scientist did the rest…
15 years of research on the use of nature to repair the damage caused by humans, and more specifically on industrial sites, since she is interested in heavy metals. The researcher realized, by seeing plants survive in very degraded environments, where they should not be able to grow, that some plants have adapted to the pollution that they capture by their roots, and store in the leaves, in watertight cellular compartments that protect them themselves They thus indirectly clean the area where they are rooted. Their adaptation is such that they even end up seeking these zones expressly, simply because by growing there they are sheltered from any competition.
Claude Grison has created four start-ups, including Bio Inspir’, and collaborated with chemical, pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies, including Belgarena, Colas, Klorane, Chimex, a subsidiary of L’Oréal, and the Japanese company Takasago.
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