Eric Chatelain

Eric_ChatelainHead of Drug Discovery, DNDi
Geneva, Switzerland
http://www.dndi.org/

Eric Chatelain has extensive Research and Drug development experience gained from the academia and the industry, as well as management experience, and is well connected with international groups working on Neglected Diseases. Eric Chatelain graduated with a PhD in Biochemistry in 1993 at the INSA Lyon, France. Following 5 years in the academia (ICRF, London, UK and FMI/Novartis, Basel, Switzerland) as a Research Fellow, he joined the pharmaceutical industry (Spirig Pharma AG, Switzerland) in 1999. Focus was on Dermatology R&D and Eric Chatelain led the Biopharmacy Research Lab (till 2003) before heading the Pre-clinical Department (till 2007). In that position, he gained extensive acquaintance with all the processes, workflows and interfaces involved in drug development; he was involved in project development and interacting with people of all disciplines at all levels. His activities led to major projects being taken on board for further clinical development. Since joining DNDi (Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, a not-for-profit R&D organisation, whose focus is to develop drugs/treatments for the most neglected diseases) in 2007, Eric’s main role is the management of various projects/teams around the world working on the development of new drugs for neglected diseases. Until mid-2009 he was responsible for all screening/early discovery activities before joining the Chagas disease team and taking on responsibility for all Chagas discovery and preclinical projects. During that period he was responsible for the development for high-throughput screening assays (HTS) to assess compounds for their activity against Leishmania and T. cruzi, the pathogen involved in Chagas disease, and led DNDi global current effort in lead optimization for that disease with major and recognized institutions in Australia, Brazil, Europe and South Korea. In 2011 he played an essential role in restructuring of DNDi lead optimization programs and now co-leads the entire DNDi lead optimization effort.