About me

I have been working at the interface between molecular medicine (mainly cancer, the complement system and blood coagulation), structural bioinformatics and chemoinformatics for over 25 years in different countries (USA, Finland, Sweden, France), in the private and academic sectors.

I am research director at the INSERM Institute (the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research is a public scientific and technological institute which operates under the joint authority of the French Ministry of Health and French Ministry of Research) and was head of the research unit U973 in Paris between 2009 and 2018. I am presently working in INSERM U1141, Robert-Debré Hospital, Paris - France.

I study novel targets and mechanisms such as those involving protein-protein interactions and transient protein-membrane interactions using different types of AI-powered in silico approaches, in collaboration with experimental and clinical teams.

I am Editor in Chief of Frontiers in Drug Discovery, a new journal launched during Summer 2021.

Biography

I contributed strongly to the development of several chemical probes with one molecule designed in silico presently in phase II. I also worked on the rational stabilization of therapeutic proteins and on small molecule drug repurposing. With several collaborators, we developed 5 software packages and databases, several of them are used worldwide. I have over 240 publications (over 12700 citations, H-index 62 - Google Scholar), 14 patents, 12 book chapters. I am the co-founder of 2 startups (Sweden and USA) and Editor in Chief of Frontiers in Drug Discovery.

I was co-director of the doctoral school MTCI from 2012-2015.

Old studies

Examples of contributions combining in silico and experimental approaches in the field of cancer and coagulation-complement at the beginning of my career and how these relate to my present research projects

  • Around 1993: analysis of protein-protein interfaces in blood coagulation and the complement system and the inhibition of these interactions with antibodies and peptides (USA)
  • Around 1993: the use of structural bioinformatics to study therapeutic targets, like the prostate specific antigen (PSA, first structural model) and the use of protein-protein docking to help the design of antibodies to measure PSA free and PSA in complex with serpin molecules (USA, Sweden, Finland). Then, many other proteins important for human health were investigated, like proteins involved in the anticoagulant protein C pathway. Modulation of protein-protein interactions with peptides
  • Around 1994: the use of structural analysis to investigate point mutations identified in patients, essentially for thrombosis and bleeding disorders (USA)
  • Around 1995: modulation of proteins with heparin
  • Around 1995: the use of ligand docking tools to investigate mAbs-small molecule interactions while working in the private sector (Biotech in Finland)
  • Around 1998: the first structural model of a discoidin domain (Sweden)
  • Around 2003: stabilization of proteins via site directed mutagenesis designed after computational analysis, area of hemophilia, for a big pharma in the USA
  • Around 2003: virtual screening and more specifically hierarchical virtual screening (France), applications in cancer, coagulation,...
  • Around 2005-2006: computer design of low molecular weight compounds that mimic a protein-protein interaction and the design of a molecule that is now in clinical trial phase 1b (Sweden)
  • Around 2006: tools to compute some ADMET properties (France)
  • Around 2006: modulation of protein-membrane interactions (France)