Dr. Thomas Pradeu

Thomas Pradeu is a tenured Senior Investigator in Philosophy of Science at CNRS & the University of Bordeaux, France, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University, California, USA. He is the founder and leader of the Conceptual Biology and Medicine team in Bordeaux, and the coordinator of the Philosophy in Biology and Medicine international network (PhilInBioMed).

From 2008 to 2014, he was an Associate Professor in Philosophy at Paris-Sorbonne University. Starting from 2014, he became an “embedded philosopher” in the Bordeaux immunology lab (ImmunoConcept). From 2015 to 2020, he was the PI of an ERC Starting Grant project on the microbiome and biological individuality. In 2020-21, he was a CASBS Fellow at Stanford University. His research, published equally in science and philosophy of science journals, deals with immunology, cancer biology, and the microbiome, and more generally with the conceptual and theoretical foundations of today’s biological and biomedical sciences.

His work in the field of conceptual and theoretical immunology has explored the immune self-nonself, immunological memory, the danger theory, the discontinuity theory, the crosstalk between the microbiome and the immune system, among many other issues. He collaborates with many scientists, including Eric Vivier, Gérard Eberl, Sören Paludan, Rob Knight, Margaret McFall-Ngai, Louis Du Pasquier, and Bruno Lemaitre. He was awarded the Lakatos Award for his work in philosophy of science.

Most significant publications:

• Pradeu T, Daignan-Fornier B, Ewald A, et al (2023) Reuniting philosophy and science to advance cancer research. Biological Reviews 98:1668–1686. https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12971
• Pradeu T (2019) Philosophy of Immunology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (Open access)
• Laplane L… Pradeu T. (2019) Why science needs philosophy. PNAS 116:3948–3952. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1900357116
• Pradeu T, Du Pasquier L (2018) Immunological memory: What’s in a name? Immunol Rev 283:7–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/imr.12652
• Eberl G, Pradeu T (2018) Towards a General Theory of Immunity? Trends in Immunology 39:261–263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.it.2017.11.004
• Pradeu T, Jaeger S, Vivier E (2013) The speed of change: towards a discontinuity theory of immunity? Nat Rev Immunol 13:764–769. https://doi.org/10.1038/nri3521
• Pradeu T (2012) The Limits of the Self: Immunology and Biological Identity. Oxford University Press, Paperback 2018, New York