INNOVATING FOR
CANCER PATIENTS

Pierre Laurent-Puig is a University professor and hospital practitioner (PU-PH) at the University Paris Cité and the European Georges Pompidou Hospital (hEGP) from Assistance Publique Hopitaux de Paris (AP-HP).

He has performed a clinical training in gastroenterology and a research training centered on the characterization of somatic alterations in cancer. Since 2006, he is director of the MEPPOT laboratory (Personalised medicine, pharmacogenomics and therapeutic optimisation) whose research focuses on prognostic and predictive diagnostic markers of treatment resistance. He is co-director of the Cordeliers Research Center (Paris).

He is the president of the Cancéropôle Île-de-France. Since 2013, he is also director of the SIRIC CARPEM funded by INCA. He also directs the Paris-CARPEM Cancer Institute certified as a “Comprehensive Cancer Research Center” by the OECI. He is co-author of 475 scientific articles and co-inventor of 7 patents.

Yannick Rondelez is CNRS research director at ESPCI in Paris. After an academic training in Physico-Chemistry at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Cachan), he did a PhD thesis in chemistry before leaving for Japan to perform a post-doctoral research focused on biophysics.

Back to France, he worked as a consultant before being recruited as a CNRS researcher in Japan (LIMMS).

In 2016, he obtained an ERC consolidator grant and moved his group to ESPCI. He is developing a research project on information at the molecular level and how simple chemical components can be rationally assembled to obtain complex dynamic systems.

His expertise covers various fields covering complex biomolecular systems, enzymatic engineering, microfluidics, biotechnologies and diagnostics (60 publications).

Co-inventor of 10 patents, he is co-founder of the startup MINOS Biosciences with Doctors Hubert Geisler and Gaël Blivet-Bailly and Professors Jerome Cros, Andrew Griffiths, Patrick Tabeling and Aurelien de Reynies.

Guillaume Gines holds a PhD in Biological Chemistry from the University of Grenoble (2013).

After, two post-doctoral research positions at the University of Tokyo (2013-2016) and at ESPCI Paris (2016-2020), he was recruited in 2020 as a CNRS researcher at the Gulliver Laboratory at ESPCI Paris.

Co-author of 18 publications and co-inventor of 5 patents, he works on the development of ultra-sensitive biomarker detection technologies.

Since 2021, he has been coordinating the European ERC Starting Grant MoP-MiP project, combining DNA nanotechnology and microfluidic tools for microRNA profiling.

Elodie Sollier is consultant in strategy and innovation funding.

Engineer from INPG, Elodie also holds a PhD degree in microfluidics for healthcare applications.

After 10 years of R&D experience in research, both in France (CEA Grenoble) and in the US (UCLA, Stanford), Elodie co-founded an innovative company in the US, specialized in the use of microfluidics for cancer cell isolation from blood.

As co-founder and CSO, Elodie has led market analysis, feasibility studies, built a business plan, while also participating in the fund raising and being involved in the first sales of the commercial product after its launch.

Elodie is now providing support to start-ups and ETI in the key steps of their innovation strategy management.

Brian Lockhart PhD, since 2020 holds the position of Global Head of Companion Diagnostics at Servier, and is responsible for the coordinated development of Companion Diagnostics to ensure their co-approval with targeted therapeutic products through cross-functional interactions with multiple diagnostic partners.

Brian obtained his PhD in Biochemistry in 1990 from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland followed by 2 successive post-doctorate positions in the Pasteur Institute, Paris, and the INSERM-U336 (Aging & Plastic of Human Central Nervous System) in Montpellier.

In 2004, he was a Senior Scientist in Parke-Davis, Paris and then joined Servier in 1995 as Project Leader in The Division of Cerebral Pathology.

Since 2004, he has held several positions within the Servier Group; Director of the Division of Molecular Pathology & Physiopathology, Director of Biotechnology & Biomarker Research Division, and Director of The Center of Excellence Biotechnology.

His extensive expertise in pre-clinical and clinical drug development revolves notably around Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics & Molecular HistoPathology and their assimilation into Target Validation and Biomarker Development & Translational-Guided Clinical Research in Oncology. Brian has contributed to over 50 peer-reviewed publications and 10 patent approvals.

JC Baret is a physicist, professor at the University of Bordeaux and group leader at the CNRS laboratory CRPP in Pessac (F). He obtained his PhD in 2005 from the University of Twente (NL).

After four years of post-doc at the ISIS Institute led by Jean-Marie Lehn in Strasbourg (F) he joined the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-organization in Goettingen (DE) as Max Planck Group Leader.

In 2014, he was appointed as full professor at the Univ.

Bordeaux and later in 2016 as Junior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France.

Over the past 20 years he has been actively involved in the microfluidic miniatiurisation and automation of biological assays leading to the development of new methodologies for high-throughput experimentation in biology.

He was awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2013, followed by a ERC Proof of Concept Grant in 2016 to explore the industrialisation of his research activities in the physical chemistry of formulation for microfluidics.

This led him to co-found the company Emulseo specialized in industrial formulations for microfluidics. JC Baret co-authored 80+ scientific papers and 10 patents and patent applications and he now serves as Editorial Board Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Lab on a chip.

Clara Montagut graduated in Medicine and Surgery from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (1999) and later trained as a specialist in Medical Oncology at Hospital Clínic de Barcelona. She completed her training at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center – Harvard School of Medicine in Boston, where she worked in personalized medicine. On her return from the United States in 2008, she defended her doctoral thesis on resistance to targeted therapy (Universitat de Barcelona, excellent cum laude) and joined Hospital del Mar, where she is currently Head of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Unit, and leads a team of clinical and translational research in novel therapies and biomarkers. Since 2012, Dr Montagut is professor at the Pompeu Fabra University. Currently Dr Montagut is working at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center on liquid biopsy and immunotherapy in colon cancer.

Dr. Montagut has led and participated in a large number of national and international clinical trials in gastrointestinal cancer, and has more than 50 publications in prestigious journals, including Nature Medicine, where she reported the discovery of a mutation of resistance to anti-EGFR therapy in colorectal cancer. Dr. Montagut is member of numerous national and international societies including the Spanish Association of Medical Oncology, the Spanish group of digestive tumors (TTD), the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) and the American Association of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).