Jean-Jacques Diaz received his PhD in 1988 at the University of Lyon. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Kansas State University. In 1991 he joined the Medical University in Lyon as the group leader of the Ribosome, Translation and Cancer’s team at the Cancer Research Centre of Lyon. He is specialized in the study of nucleolus, ribosomes and translational regulation in physiological and pathological conditions. He demonstrated for the first time that ribosomal RNA methylation is a key feature of cancer cells. He brought evidence of rRNA 2′-O-methylation plasticity and its role in the control of human ribosomes. He unraveled the integration of 5-fluorouracil within ribosomes favors cancer cell drug-tolerance. He is involved in clinical trials to evaluate anti-cancer molecules.