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the Tafalgie therapeutics team

5 founders

Tafalgie Therapeutics was set up by an experienced and dynamic team with complementary scientific and business experience.

The management team and founding partners of Tafalgie Therapeutics are supported by a scientific committee, a scientific advisory board and a federative support team and group of partners, all motivated to ensure the success of the project.

Eric schettini

President
Biotech investor
Entrepreneur with 12 successful IPOs
25 years of experience
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stephane gaillard

General Manager

Pain research
Mouse models
Characterization
Production

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aziz moqrich

CSO
Specialist in the peripheral nervous system
Publication in international journals
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olivier blin

Chairman of the COMEX
Professor of Clinical pharmacology (AMU)
Past positions: regulatory (ANMS)
Industrial (GSK)
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laurent labatut

Chairman of the board
Strategic positions in the chemical industry
Marketing Management
Scale-up specialist

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The Scientific Committee

The Scientific Committee, chaired by Aziz Moqrich, is a collegial advisory body not directly involved in management of the company.

Its mission is to advise the Chairman and other senior managers of the company concerning the definition and implementation of the strategic orientations of the company, so as to ensure a high quality, legitimacy and consistency of its research and development activities and to monitor scientific progress.

Honorary President

Ardem Patapoutian

Ardem Patapoutian is a molecular biologist specializing in sensory transduction.

His research has led to the identification of new ion channels and receptors activated by temperature, mechanical force, and increases in cell volume. His laboratory has shown that these ion channels play crucial roles in sensing temperature, touch, and pain, in proprioception, and in regulating vascular tone.

Patapoutian was born in Lebanon in 1967 and attended the American University of Beirut for one year before emigrating to The United States in 1986. He became a US citizen, graduating from UCLA in 1990 and obtaining a PhD from Caltech in 996, for his work in the laboratory of Dr. Barbara Wold.

Following his postdoctoral work with Dr. Lou Reichardt at UCSF, he joined the Scripps Research Institute faculty in 2000, and is currently Professor in the Department of Neuroscience. He also held a position at the Genomics Institute of The Novartis Research Foundation from 2000-2014.

Patapoutian was awarded the Young Investigator Award from the Society for Neuroscience in 2006 and was named an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 2014.

He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2016), a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2017) and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2020). He received the 2017 Alden Spencer Award from Columbia University (together with David Ginty), the 2019 Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Research (with David Julius), the 2020 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience (with David Julius), the 2021 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (shared with David Julius), and the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (with David Julius).

2021 : Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (with David Julius)

Jon Levine

Neuroscientist

Jon David Levine is an American neuroscientist known for his research on pain and analgesia, particularly in the area of placebo studies. He is Professor of medicine, oral and maxillofacial surgery, and neurosciences at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

• Prof. Levine’s research focuses on pain and analgesia, including, in particular, the mechanism by which the placebo effect can relieve pain. In 1978, he published an influential study showing that placebo analgesia could be blocked by the opioid antagonist naloxone.

Levine’s studies were the starting point for “placebo biology”.

Jean-Louis Kraus

Professor Emeritus at the University of Aix Marseille and former Professor at McGill University, Montreal, Canada

Jean-Louis Kraus is Professor Emeritus at the University of Aix Marseille, France and was formerly Professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

  • He has an extensive experience in the creation of biotechnology start-ups, such as Trophos (which was acquired by Roche, Switzerland), BioPharmed and Planktovie. 
  • His international reputation in medicinal chemistry has resulted in his invitation to serve as a member of numerous scientific research evaluation committees (Inserm, FRM, Sidaction, ANRS) in France and abroad, and as a senior scientist at Biochem Pharma (Canada). He has also served as a member of various advisory committees for strategic private investments and was responsible for research & development as a member of the Board of Marseille University (creation of Protisvalor).

Prof. Kraus’s considerable experience and commercial success have enabled him to develop extensive networks during the course of his career.

CLIFFORD WOOLF

Dr. Clifford J. Woolf is Professor of neurology and neurobiology at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Director of the F.M Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children's Hospital. His work has greatly contributed to our understanding of pain.

Dr. Clifford J. Woolf was born in South Africa, where he earned his MB, BCh, and PhD degrees. He then moved to London and became Professor of Neurobiology at University College London. In 1997, he was recruited by the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School to serve as the Richard J. Kitz Professor of Anesthesiology Research. 

  • In 2010 he was named Director of the F. M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children’s Hospital and became Professor of Neurology and Neurobiology at HMS. He holds faculty positions at both the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. Over his career, Dr. Woolf has received many honors and prizes. 

 

  •  In 2020, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was received an honorary degree from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He received a Gill Distinguished Scientist award and the Reeve-Irvine medal in 2017, the Kerr award from the American Pain Society in 2015.
  • Woolf was appointed to the Board of Scientific Councilors of the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke from 2015 to 2019 and is currently a member of the NIH HEAL Partnership Committee for the development of new treatments for pain and addiction. He has published over 300 research papers on molecular, cellular, and systems neurobiology and has a portfolio of more than 30 issued patents. 

His research focuses on the roles of the functional, chemical and structural plasticity of neurons in both the normal adaptive functions of nervous systems and in the maladaptive changes contributing to neurological diseases. He focuses, in particular, on pain, regeneration and neurodegeneration and on the exploitation of stem cell-derived neurons for disease modeling and drug screening.

Alain Eschalier

Professor Emeritus at the University of Aix Marseille and former Professor at McGill University, Montreal, Canada

Alain Eschalier (MD, PhD, PharmD) is Professor Emeritus of Medical Pharmacology at the University of Clermont, Auvergne, France and is board-certified in pharmacology, psychiatry and human biology.

 

  • He is also the former head of the Medical Pharmacology Department of the Faculty of Medicine and the University Hospital of Clermont-Ferrand.
  • He was the founding director of several Inserm research units focusing on the fundamental and clinical pharmacology of pain, participated in the creation of two start-up companies and was a consultant for several companies.
  • He has chaired the Analgesia Institute since 2014, and has chaired the biomedical and public health research committee (CRBSP) and the scientific council of the French Society of Pharmacology and Therapeutics (SFPT) since 2015.
Eschalier is investigating the preclinical and clinical pharmacology of analgesics and the pathophysiology of chronic pain.

An EXPERT TEAM

Tafalgie Therapeutics has brought together a world-class team of scientists, engineers, legal and regulatory experts, financiers, and operational managers.

laure lo ré

Scientist
Neuroscience – PHD

catarina santos

Scientist
Neuroscience – PHD

joanie delbano

Regulatory
Immunology Pharmacist

lucas Cortial

Expert
PHD Student Pharmaceutical Sciences

Caroline Mathon

General Secretary

emma schettini

CFO

Cyril Ducamin

Operations and Quality Manager

mathilde schettini

Artistic Manager

“Pain is a crucial contemporary issue, and the aging of the population only reinforces the need for curative solutions in this field. The people involved in the Tafalgie Therapeutics team appeared to me to be passionate, ambitious and solid! ”

Laurent Labatut – Chairman on the board

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Aix Marseille Université
CNRS
BPI FRANCE
REGION SUD
IBDM
SATT SUD EST
IMPULSE
EUROBIOMED
FRENCH TECH

Tafalgie Therapeutics

Tafalgie Therapeutics is a CNRS and AMU spin-off company engaged in biopharmaceutical research and committed to developing a new scientific approach for next-generation treatments based on a ground-breaking innovation : a mechanism of action derived from an endogenous secreted protein capable of modulating pain signals.

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Eric Schettini

President

After several mandates as a company director in the banking and financial sector, Eric Schettini decided to specialize in the financing SMEs, particularly innovative start-ups. He created a company for this purpose, which operated from 1999 to 2011.

Eric Schettini has acquired considerable expertise in the specificities of the biotechnology sector from managing a portfolio of more than 11 companies in this sector. As a specialist in innovation financing issues, he has been supporting the start-up and development projects of researchers and entrepreneurs with his own funds since 2011.

Stephane Gaillard

General Manager

After completing his training in neurosciences and a PhD in cell biology, Stéphane joined Aziz’s team in 2006, bringing his expertise in biochemistry and molecular biology with him.

In 2013, he launched Phenotype Expertise, a company specializing in behavioral studies in mice focusing on the central and peripheral nervous systems, and pain in particular.

Aziz Moqrich

CSO

After his PhD in neuroscience at Marseille, Aziz Moqrich became a specialist in the peripheral nervous system while working in the laboratory of Prof. Ardem Patapoutian in San Diego.

He returned to France in 2005, to build his own team at the IBDM, focusing on the identification of new molecular markers of sensory neurons. Several of his projects have culminated in publications in major international journals (Nature, Cell Reports, Science). Aziz Moqrich is the chairman of the scientific council of Tafalgie Therapeutics.

Olivier Blin

President of the Executive Committee

Olivier Blin is Professor of clinical pharmacology at AMU and previously held a visiting professorship at Imperial College (London). He joined the company in 2022.

He has considerable experience in drug development (formerly Head of Unit Physician at GSK, working on global early CNS drug development), public affairs (former member of the Board of the French Ministry of Health), regulatory affairs (former member of the Clinical Trials Committee of the French Drug Agency) and public private-public sector partnerships (former member of the IMI scientific committee in Brussels).

Laurent Labatut

Chairman on the board

Laurent Labatut graduated from HEC and then from Instead before taking on strategic positions in marketing, finance and general management (Danone, Ricard, Groupe Gascogne).

Notably, he was the CEO of the DRT group, one of the world leaders in phytochemistry (1,500 employees, turnover of 550 million Euros). He has a global vision of the world of chemistry and of innovation as a business leader.