Following doctoral studies in biochemistry at the Université de Montréal under the direction of Luis A. Rokeach and Siegfried Hekimi, Jean-Claude Labbé carried out his first postdoctoral training in the Department of Biology of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in the United States, under the direction of Bob Goldstein, studying asymmetric division of embryonic cells in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. He then joined the laboratory of Monica Gotta at the Institute of Biochemistry, ETH Hönggerberg, in Zurich, Switzerland, for a second postdoctoral training focusing on the regulation of polarity in the C. elegans embryo. He was recruited by the IRIC in 2005 to continue his work on the fundamental mechanisms governing cell division during the course of animal development.