SCIENTIFIC BOARD COMPOSITION
Yves Lévy MD, PhD is Professor of clinical immunology. He was appointed CEO and Chairman of INSERM (French National Institute for Health and Medical research) from 2014-2018. He serves also as Chairman President of the Alliance for Health and Life Sciences (Aviesan) of the main stakeholders of life and health sciences in France.
In the last 25 years, Pr Y. Lévy’s research activities have focused on field of immunology and infectious diseases, immune-based therapies and development of vaccines against HIV and also other infectious diseases. From 1996 to 2021, he led several INSERM research teams in France and in USA.
Pr Y. Lévy has created the Vaccine Research Institute (VRI). The VRI’s structure strengthens the links between basic, translational research, patients’ associations and the socioeconomic world to develop vaccines against (re)-emerging pathogens. The VRI includes a large network of teams In France, Europe and US gathering key international opinion leaders through a unique collaborative network and with a central strategic plan.
In his career Pr Y. Lévy has moved up to ten candidate vaccines until clinical development through academic or public/ industrial partnership. Through this expertise, Pr Y. Lévy has been instrumental in designing and implementing early proof-of-concept and Phase 3 clinical trials in France, Europe and internationally. Y. Lévy has published more than 250 original papers.
In his recent positions, Y. Lévy was appointed by the previous General Secretary of the United Nations as an expert member of the UN “Global Health Crises” Task Force in 2016 till 2018 and “Special Envoy” of the French Government for the coordination of the fight against Ebola in Central Africa in 2019.
Giuseppe Pantaleo, M.D., Prof. of Medicine, is Head of the Immunology and Allergy Division and Head of the Laboratory at the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV), Lausanne, Switzerland. He has made major contributions to the understanding of the immunopathogenesis of HIV infection, COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, as well as in basic immunology. He has also played a major role in the development of HIV vaccines and HIV and COVID-19 treatments based on neutralising antibodies. Prof. Pantaleo received several international awards and coordinated several European consortia, and he is a member of the HIV Vaccine Trial Network (HVTN). Prof. Pantaleo is an Executive Director of the Swiss Vaccine Research Institute (SVRI), which has been working with the Vaccine Research Institute (VRI) for many years to coordinate clinical trials on HIV vaccines. He is a co-investigator of the ANRS VRI06 Phase I clinical trial of an HIV vaccine candidate, the clinical development of which will be managed by LinKinVax.
Sharon Lewin, FRACP, PhD, Prof. of Medicine at the University of Melbourne, is the Director of The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, Melbourne, Australia. Her work focuses on basic and translational research to develop a cure for HIV and to understand the interaction between the virus and hepatitis B. She pioneered new ways to quantify small amounts of virus that persist on treatment and novel strategies to eliminate latent virus. She is President of the International AIDS Society, which has over 17,000 members and President of the Scientific Advisory Board to the main funding agency for infectious disease research in France, ANRS-MIE. In 2022, she was awarded the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (AAHMS) Outstanding Female Researcher Medal.
Anna R. Giuliano, Ph.D., Professor of Epidemiology, is the founding director of the Center for Immunization and Infection Research in Cancer (CIIRC) at the Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, Tampa, Florida. Early in her career, she worked on the links between human papillomavirus (HPV) infections and cervical cancer in women, before moving on to other HPV-related male and female cancers. Prof. Giuliano, currently leads a CIIRC research team at the Moffitt Cancer Center to accelerate the development and use of vaccines and compounds to prevent and treat cancer.