Pr. Didier Betbeder – Chief Scientific Officer

Pr. Didier BETBEDER has 30 years’ experience in drug delivery using colloids, ranging from basic research to clinical studies.  He is the pioneer of studies using the nasal administration for vaccines in humans. Working with the World Health Organization he obtained his PhD in 1988 on drug targeting to treat sleeping sickness. He then spent 2 years as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Warwick (England)  working on the development of new HIV drugs. He was then engaged by BioEurope, a company specializing in biocatalysis, before joining Biovector Therapeutics (France) as Research director from 1992 – 2001. As inventor he developed from research to clinical development a technology based on polysaccharidic nanoparticles. He conducted 5 clinical trials using these nanoparticles as nasal delivery system of vaccines. Nasal flu vaccine formulations have been clinically trailed with BioChem Pharma (Canada), SmithKline Beecham (Belgium) and Chiron (Novartis, Italy), and he has collaborated with RIBI Immunochem (US), Merck and Sanofi Pasteur. He then was Professor at the University of Artois and Lille  (2001-2019).  His research is focusing on the fabrication and characterization of nanoparticles complexed with phospholipids and studying the mechanisms implied in drug delivery across biological barriers.  He has extensive experience in Nanomedicine, and particularly in prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines. He was president of the French control release society (GTRV) from 2004-08, and board member of SFNano (French society of nanomedicine) and has over 130 international publications and 26 patents to his name.