THE TEAM

From January 2021, Yazdan Yazdanpanah is the Director of the French ANRS emerging infectious diseases Agency that fund and coordinates research on HIV, Hepatitis, STIs, Tuberculosis, emerging and re-emerging infections.
He is the Director of the Institute I3M (Immunology, Inflammation, Infectiology, and Microbiology) which gathers the main stakeholders of this thematic in France in the frame of Aviesan, the French National Alliance for Life Sciences and Health. He is also the head of the Infectious Disease department at Bichat Claude Bernard Hospital, and Professor of Medicine at Paris Diderot University, France.

Chair of « The European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership » (EDCTP) board and Vice-chair of the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness International Network (Glopid R), Yazdan Yazdanpanah research interests include the clinical epidemiology of HIV, viral hepatitis, emerging infectious diseases and the pharmaco-economics of antimicrobial agents

Yazdan Yazdanpanah is the coordinator of the EU Response project.
With a wide experience of both clinical research and coordination of large European trials, he has naturally become the Chair of the DisCoVery steering committee (WP1).

Involving many links with WHO and other international organisations, his aim has always been to reduce the social and economic burden of emerging diseases in developing countries. Yazdan Yazdanpanah commits to accelerate the clinical development of suitable medical interventions for HIV, other infectious diseases, and has fully succeeded in getting worldly renowned in the fight against COVID 19.

Maya Hites is a physician who received her medical school diploma from the “Université Libre de Bruxelles” in 1999. She then received a diploma in Tropical Medicine from the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp in 2000. She gained experience in tropical medicine while working for Aide Médicale Internationale and Médecin Sans Frontières (MSF-B) from 2000- 2002. She then specialized in internal medicine, and infectious diseases at the “Université Libre de Bruxelles” from 2002-2008. She joined the Clinic of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine at Erasme Hospital in Brussels, in 2008. In 2017, she obtained her PhD at the “Université de Bruxelles” after defending her thesis entitled, “Beta-lactam regimens in obese patients- what is the adequate dosage regimen?” Currently, she is a Professor at Erasme hospital.

She has authored over 40 publications. Her main research topics are: 1) optimisation of dosage regimens of anti-infectious agents in special patient populations (critically ill patients, obese patients, cirrhotic patients, etc.), 2) improving diagnotic techniques for infections such as community and hospital acquired pneumonia, invasive aspergillosis and Pneumocystis jirovicii infections, and more recently 3) identifying efficace therapeutic options in COVID-19. She is a co-leader of the DisCoVeRy trial in Europe.

Florence is managing the Discovery Trial.

Infectious disease specialist (MD, PhD) at the Croix-Rousse Hospital of the Lyon University Hospital, Florence is a scientist affiliated to the Inserm CIRI (institut national en santé et en recherche médicale, centre international de recherche en Infectiologie) but also a "bed-side" clinician who takes care of patients on a daily basis. Her field of expertise is severe pulmonary infections and infections in the immunocompriomised settings.

Principal investigator in the EU-Response project, she is co-chair of the Discovery Steering Committee and co-leader of the WP1. Working with many countries in Europe, she is in charge, among others, of the opening of new clinical investigation centres and the follow up of selected ones.

Assia Ferrane is one of the Inserm Discovery project leaders working specifically on the implementation of the trial in France and coordinating the study providers.
She is a physician and started working as a clinical project manager at the INSERM Clinical Research Department in April 2021.

José-Artur Paiva is specialist in Intensive Care Medicine and in Internal Medicine and subspecialist in Emergency Medicine and in Management of Healthcare Systems.

- From 2005 to 2019, consecutively, Director of the Emergency Department, Director of Intensive Care Medicine Service, Director of Emergency and Intensive Care Management Unit and Hospital Medical Director, in Centro Hospitalar Universitário Sao Joao, Porto, Portugal.

- Since 2019, Director of the Intensive Care Medicine Service.
- Associate Professor of Medicine in Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto.

- From 2010 to 2016, Director of the Program for the Prevention of Antimicrobial Resistance (2010-2013) and Director of the Program for Prevention of Healthcare Associated Infection and Antimicrobial Resistance (2013-2016), in the Directorate General of Health (Portugal). In March 2020, he was nominated, once again, as Director of the same Program.

- In 2018, Gold Medal of the Ministry of Health.

- Member of the National Academy of Medicine (2019).

- Member of the Portuguese Task Force for the Intensive Care Response to COVID-19, nominated by the Health Ministry.

- Author of around 200 papers, cited for more than 7 295 times, index i10 of 72, index h of 33 and index Research Gate of 41,85.
José-Artur Paiva is EU-Response WP1 co-leader , Portuguese coordinating investigator and inherently member of the Steering Committee, and CHUSJ Representative in the Consortium.

Kristian Tonby, MD PhD, is Associate Professor at the Department of Infectious Diseases at the Universty of Oslo. This Infectious Disease specialist and senior consultant is the Principal Investigator of the Discovery trial for Norway.

Prof. Monika Halánová, PhD is working at the Faculty of Medicine, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice currently in the position of Vice-Dean for Grants, Development and International Relations and concurrently as Head of Department of Epidemiology.

In addition to teaching activities, in research activities she focused mainly on the issue of infectious diseases and opportunistic diseases. She has a significant share in the solution of grant projects focusing mainly on epidemiology and of infectious diseases, to this time is a researcher of 28 scientific and research projects in position as principal investigator, deputy principal investigator, or scientific co-worker). She was also head of the working group for Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Faculty of Medicine, which is participating in the preparation of a new international study program, MSc. in Migrant Health: Addressing New Challenges in Europe. In project “DisCoVery within EU-RESPONSE she works as national coordinator for Slovak Republic.

Dr STAUB is a medical doctor, speciazised in Infectious Diseases who studied in Srasbourg, France. Her fields of interest are HIV, hepatitis and tropical diseases. Since 1997 she is working in the Centre Hospitalier in Luxembourg, where she is leading the Infectious Diseases unit.

She is the Principal Investigator for DisCoVery in Luxembourg since April 2020. The first patient included out of France in DisCoVery was included in Luxembourg. Fifteen patients have been included in DisCoVery in Luxembourg.

I am the head of the Infectious Diseases Unit and Research Director of HIV and Infectious Diseases at La Paz Hospital, and associate professor of Medicine at the Autonoma University School of Medicine all in Madrid, Spain.

My research interests, which include antiretroviral therapy, development of new antiretrovirals and emerging infectious diseases have driven the publication of more than 340 scientific papers many of them clinical trials or antiretroviral therapy. I am member of the GESIDA (Spanish Group for the study of AIDS) antiretroviral therapy expert guidelines and chair of the antiretroviral panel of the European AIDS Clinical Society (EACS) guidelines. I am a member of the editorial committee of Antiviral Therapy, HIV Medicine, Open Forum in Infectious Diseases and Lancet HIV

For EU-RESPONSE I participate in WP1 as the coordinator for extending Discovery in Spain. For WP2 I participate in the Clinical Trials Facilitation and Coordination Group. I am the Co-PI for SolidAct, member of the trial steering committee of Solidact and a member also of the Expert Drug Committee

Prof. Anna Piekarska is the Head of the Department of Infectious Diseases and Hepatology at the Medical University of Lodz Bieganski Hospital, and member of the medical council of the COVID-19 advisor of the Polish Prime Minister. She is the Principal Investigator for DisCoVery in Poland.

Hélène Espérou is an hematologist. She currently heads the clinical research department of the French Institute of health and medical research (Inserm). As such, she assists researchers to insure the doability, the quality and the adapted implementation of their research, and she also guarantees that regulatory texts are respected and that research participants are protected.

For the EU Response program, she is the Inserm sponsor representative of the Executive committee and also at all other governance committees. She leads the team of the project managers who manage the exchanges with the stakeholders involved in the WP1 DisCoVeRy trial running.

Hélène Espérou has worked for eighteen years as a clinical practitioner at St Louis Hospital. She received a degree in advanced studies in Health economics. For the last fifteen years, she has occupied some different positions in public health institutions, the French Agency of Biomedicine, the National Institute of Cancer, and the French federation of the comprehensive cancer centers (FCCCs). During two years, she held a position at the Cabinet of the Ministry of Health as a technical adviser for Health policies.

Juliette Saillard is a research engineer at Inserm. She graduated from the University Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, and became a clinical team coordinator at ANRS (French Agency for research on AIDS and Viral hepatitis) working on interventional trials, national and European.

Juliette is one of the Inserm Discovery project managers, working more specifically on the implementation of the trial in Europe and coordinating Clinical Trial Units in each country.

Christelle Delmas is one of the Inserm Discovery project managers, working more specifically on the implementation of the trial in France and coordinating providers for the study.

She holds a Master degree (Master 1) in Public Health from Bordeaux School of Public Health (Isped) and a Master degree (Master 2) in Epidemiology and Clinical Research from Nancy School of Public Health and became in 2015 a clinical project manager at the clinical research department of INSERM.

Marina Dumousseaux is one of the Inserm Discovery project managers, working more specifically on the implementation of the trial in Europe and coordinating Clinical Trial Units in each country.

She has a degree in pharmaceutical sciences and started to work as a clinical project manager at the clinical research department of INSERM in November 2020

Soizic Le Mestre has been working at ANRS on HIV and viral hepatitis clinical research budget since 2003. She's also in charge of the ANRS french clinical research network.

She came to support Inserm in march 2020 on implementation on several reseach on COVID-19.

She's in charge of budget of EU-Response's WP1: budget evaluation and contracting with local hospitals.

Charles Burdet is an Associate Professor in Clinical Epidemiology at Université de Paris and Hôpital Bichat (Paris, France). He was trained as a MD specialized in Public Health and holds a medical degree in Clinical Infectious Diseases. He specialized in the design and analysis of clinical studies, and is involved in the methodological aspects of the DisCoVeRy clinical trial.

Jacques Demotes is the Director General of the European Clinical Research Infrastructure Network (ECRIN), which he founded in 2004. A neurologist and professor of cell biology, through ECRIN, he has contributed to numerous initiatives and collaborative projects related to multinational clinical trials. In particular, he chaired the working group that drafted the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Council Recommendation on the Governance of Clinical Trials.

Marta del Alamo, PhD in molecular biology, is Project Manager at ECRIN. She coordinates the management of multinational clinical trials in several European countries and provides support to clinical investigators preparing clinical studies/projects for European funding. Marta is also actively involved in ECRIN's capacity building / infrastructure development activities.

Holding a research-oriented master’s degree in humanities and social sciences, Nathalie has a long-standing working experience in the management of European projects.

For the Hospices Civils of Lyon, she is in charge of the coordination of the EU-Response project working with Benjamin on biobank issues and with Maude on virology aspects.

Identifying referent laboratories in Europe, she works on the harmonization of virology samples processing through Europe, enhancing capacity building and with the final aim of preparing a sustainable and responsive European network of laboratories

Virologist (PharmD, PhD) for the French National Reference Center for Respiratory Viruses and for the hospital lab (Infectious Agents Institute, Hospices Civils of Lyon), she is in charge of the virological aspects of trials such as Discovery or EU-Solidact platform trials and now the building of a Virology laboratories network at the European level within the EU-Response project. She still continues to be involved in advising and managing the diagnosis of viral infections in patients hospitalized in Lyon.

After a master’s degree in cell infectious diseases and vaccinology, Benjamin specialized in clinical research.

Operational and quality manager of the North Biological Resources Centre of the Hospices Civils of Lyon, he is in charge of the management of samples in clinical trials (phase 1 to 3), in collaboration with the Clinical Research Centre. Involved since the beginning in the Discovery protocol, with the management of samples, the drafting of the laboratory manual, the training of French centres and the centralization of PCR samples, he follows now this trial at the European level within the EU-Response project.

Alpha DIALLO, as MD specialized in clinical pharmacology is the Head of Inserm Clinical Research Safety Department for Inserm and ANRS | MIE. Alpha Diallo is also the EU safety group coordinator for the EU C4C pediatric consortium and he is a drug safety specialist with a strong experience in co-morbilities and drug-induced related-adverse event. He has led and built number of international clinical trials Safety Working Group including those held in EU and outside EU area in HIV, hepatitis and TB infections at the ANRS/ANRS | MIE and in other specialities including emerging infectious diseases for Inserm. He is  actually the Discovery Safety matters coordinator and Safety Working leader.