Matthias Lambert’s extraordinary itinerary

Matthias Lambert is the discreet hero of an astonishing story. From a young age, he had to fight against adversity. Against an illness, unknown when he was born, which weakens his muscles and exhausts him. He discovered it at 8 years old, on a football field, a sport he loves. “My legs didn’t obey my brain,” he says. The disease that weakens his body is an extremely rare form of myopathy, without name or treatment. When he learned of this disability, his father killed himself. The ordeal is immense…

His mother will fight for two. Matthias deploys an iron will to stem the effects of the illness and manage to study – first at the Saint-Omer high school, then at the University of Lille. Because, faithful to his dreams, he intends to realize all his projects: at 15, visiting the Telethon laboratory, he decides to become a researcher.

Three years later, after the baccalaureate, he opted for biology, then landed a research internship in the department of his neurologist. Absorbing scientific studies at high speed thanks to a brilliant memory, Matthias has an idea: spotting symptoms common to a form of myopathy, he suggests testing three genes… in the middle of 20,000. Bingo! His intuition was correct: one of the three, the TPM3, is defective. “Finally, I knew where my pathology came from! I had been fighting for twenty-five years against an unknown enemy and I had just torn off his mask…”

Serving others

A few months later, he completed his thesis on this subject, then applied to several Anglo-Saxon laboratories. One of the most prestigious in the world opens its doors to him: Harvard, in the United States. There, he validated his discovery of TPM3 and worked for almost ten years on myopathies.

He has just been recruited by an American biotechnology company. Because Matthias is not done with his dreams: he is determined to find treatments. “For me, it is too late, but I want to find something for others, for the children of today and tomorrow,” he confides. With his stubbornness, his agile brain and his big heart, Matthias moves forward, faithful to what has carried him since childhood. He has just published The fight of a life, Ed. du Rocher, 280 p. ; €19.90.