  Charm and beauty production are probed with the ALICE experiment at the LHC
by studying the single lepton transverse momentum distribution (electrons at
mid-rapidity, muons at large-rapidities) and D mesons reconstructed in their
hadronic decays. The differential production cross sections in proton proton
interactions show a good agreement with perturbative QCD calculations at both
sqrt(s) = 2.76 and 7 TeV. The measurements in lead lead reactions at
sqrt(s_{NN})= 2.76 TeV evidence a reduction (or suppression) of the production
rate at intermediate and high pt in the most central collisions with respect to
the rate in proton proton interactions.
