Dr. Endalamaw Gadisa Belachew, Lead Researcher and Acting Directorate Director, Malaria and NTD research directorate.
Born in 1972, Arsi, Ethiopia, Dr. Gadisa holds a Bachelor of Science in Applied Biology and Master of Science in Applied Genetics from Addis Ababa University and he is a Doctor of Microbiology and Parasitology from the Complutense University of Madrid.
Dr. Gadisa worked as forensic biologist at the Ethiopian Federal Police from 1997 to 2001 and as an assistant researcher at the Armauer Hansen Research Institute (AHRI) from 2006 to 2008, then as a postdoctoral researcher from Sept 2012 to 2015, a senior researcher from 2016 to 2018, and lead researcher from 2017 onwards. He is a member of the National NTD Advisory Committee, and the National Malaria Elimination Technical Advisory Committee.

Email: endalamaw.gadisa@ahri.gov.et

Thoopmanee Kaendiao is a young Thai pharmacist who joined the DPP project as a research associate in July 2021.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Pharmaceutical Science from Mahidol University, Thailand, and has been registered as a pharmacist since 2013. She had been working in the Bangkok hospital for five years where she developed skills in pharmaceutical care and operational management.
After years of working in a hospital, she is enthusiastic to work on research, believing that it can provide effective and efficient tools in health care practice.
« As a hospital pharmacist, I appreciate the work that the researchers have done and provided us with knowledge and tools to apply in our health care practice. It helps us to work with more confidence. Knowing the outcome of their efforts, I am inspired to become one of them. »

Tina Kauss (PhD, PharmD, HDR) is an Assistant Professor at Bordeaux University, teaching pharmaceutical technology and biopharmacy at the School of Pharmacy. Her expertise includes pharmaceutical formulation development and drug delivery (traditional and nanosystems) of antibiotics and antimalarial drugs in particular. She has worked on drug reformulation for developing countries with World Health Organization (e.g. artemether, ceftriaxone, azithromycin) and has participated in several international projects. Since her arrival in 2016 at ChemBioPharm (ARNA Inserm U1212, CNRS 5320, University of Bordeaux), she has become interested in the therapeutic potential of bioinspired molecules and she has developed new strategies using lipid conjugates of oligonucleotides to tackle antibiotic resistance. She is the author of 27 peer-reviewed international articles, has one patent and one pending patent (ORCID n° 0000-0002-0541-6684). Her multidisciplinary background in the broad field of pharmaceutical development and therapeutic innovations allows her to work in all fields of preclinical therapeutic innovation.

Pascal Millet Ph.D., Retired, formerly Associate Professor – Hospital Biologist, Bordeaux University Hospital.
Currently Administrative member and treasurer of ReMeD (Réseau Médicaments & Développement).

Email: pascal.millet@u-bordeaux.fr

At the end of his PhD, Pascal Millet joined the Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA, USA, as Research assistant, Head of the reference center for imported malaria in USA, and Associate Professor at Emory University, Atlanta GA. He moved to Gabon as Research Director of the Parasitology Laboratory at the Centre de Recherche medical de Franceville (CIRMF). Back to France, he worked for Pierre Fabre Medicaments as Project Leader for malaria, then participated to the creation of the Technology Transfer Office at Bordeaux University Hospital. He was Head of the Incubateur Régional d’Aquitaine, and was elected Associate Professor – Hospital Biologist at Bordeaux University / CHU. As part of his tenure, he was appointed Advisor to the Rector of the University of Health Sciences in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and then joined the Chembiopharm team (INSERM Unit 1212 – CNRS Unit 5320) in Bordeaux. Pascal Millet has conducted research in parasitic diseases, especially on malaria. He participated in malaria vaccine trials in non-human primates in the USA and Gabon, and established a field study site and directed research projects on malaria, filariasis, and trypanosomiasis in Gabon. At Bordeaux University, he oriented his career towards drug development, and contributed to the development of strategies for the control of neglected diseases. He initiated the development of the antimalarial drug artesunate–amodiaquine (ASAQ®), commercialised by Sanofi. He is author and co-author of 130 peer-reviewed publications.

Dr. Julie Nguyen Ngoc Pouplin, PharmD, PhD (ORCID 0000-0002-0726-4119)

Julie holds a Pharm D from the University of Strasbourg, France, covering Industrial Pharmacy, Tropical and Infectious diseases and Molecular pharmacology modelling. Following this, she studied for a MSc and PhD at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris; her PhD was on the chemistry and activity of natural products against Plasmodium falciparum. She then went to work at the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU) in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam, where she established the Clinical Pharmacology laboratory and ran pharmacokinetic studies. While at OUCRU, she did a second MSc in Experimental Therapeutics in Oxford. Before becoming the DPP project leader, she worked on developing a clinical quality system for the clinical trials support group at MORU, Bangkok.
She brings to the DPP project her substantial experience in drug development and clinical research, covering the spectrum of preclinical work to phase III studies.

Dr. Alphonse Ouedraogo is a middle career scientist working at the Groupe de Recherche Action en Santé (GRAS). He is a medical doctor who has been working in the field of malaria research for the last 15 years and has co-authored more than 60 manuscripts published in peer-reviewed journals. He has a track record of conducting phase I to phase IV clinical trials in malaria. He is leading currently a team of clinical researchers whose work includes the prevention of malaria (such as malaria vaccines candidate trials as well as epidemiological studies for a better understanding of the dynamics of malaria transmission), antimalarial drug discovery studies, and antimalarial pharmacokinetic pharmacodynamic studies.

Mrs. Smita Pawar is a Senior Project Manager at Bilcare’s facility in Pune, India, where she has worked since 2006.
She obtained her Bachelor’s in Pharmacy at the University of Pune and holds a Master in Business Administration from Dr. D Y Patil Vidyapeeth, University of Pune.
Smita has broad industry experience over 15 years in the areas of clinical trial supplies, R & D formulation project management, technology transfer, manufacturing and packaging, and supporting dossiers filling for registration globally. She was the main point of contact for two projects with MORU for which Bilcare provided customised packaging for two large placebo-controlled trials of primaquine as radical cure and transmission blocking.

Dr. Anne-Marie Pensé-Lhéritier (HDR) is a Professor at Ecole de Biologie Industrielle (EBI) in France. Over the past 20 years, she has developed and worked on a drug sensory panel and has become an international reference for the evaluation of topical products and oral forms.
Her expertise has been recognised by several national drug agencies and she serves an adviser to such organisations. In addition, she has conducted numerous research projects in partnership with industry for pharmaceutical and cosmetic products. She remains active in research to improve the acceptability of medicines by children and is involved currently in several international collaborations.

Emilie Poupin holds a Master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Development and Industrial Manufacturing of Health Products. She worked for 15 years in the pharmaceutical industry as a senior technician and thereafter as head of the galenic research and development department. She has worked on many projects and many pharmaceutical dosage forms.
Since 2017, she is an engineering assistant in the faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Bordeaux, France.

Fabrice Ruiz is the CEO of ClinSearch, a Clinical Research Organization he co-founded in 1999. ClinSearch conducts clinical and epidemiological studies but also develops its own R&D programmes for the analysis of large databases and the modeling of multidimensional concepts. He is also the CEO of Imisca Therapeutics, a start-up founded in 2020 for developing a new treatment in immune-oncology.
From an academic point of view, Fabrice is a member of the board of Ecole de Biologie Industrielle. He is an active member of EuPFI (European Paediatric Formulation Initiative) and is also a member of various expert groups such as Smart Health Strategic Value Chain (European Commission), Health Technology Assessment (Conect4children) and Formulation (Conect4children), and the R2G group of the Assistance Publique des Hôpitaux de Paris which conducts research on galenic and geriatric therapeutic issues.

Dr. Sodiomon B. Sirima is a Senior Scientist and also the Chief Executive Officer of the Groupe de Recherche Action en Santé (GRAS), a private health research Institute established in 2008, accredited by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Burkina Faso and actively partnering with the Ministry of Health. During these last 25 years, he has led several clinical studies and implementation research activities on infectious diseases including malaria. These studies have generated over 170 scientific peer reviewed publications. He then became at the national and international levels one of the key opinion leaders in the malaria field. His current research interest involves clinical evaluation of new tools for infectious diseases control (such as vaccine candidates and drugs) as well as epidemiological studies.

Dr. Bob Taylor, MD (Lond), FRCP (UK), DTM&H (Lond).
ORCID number – 0000-0001-6236-0464

Bob Taylor works currently as a senior clinical research fellow at Oxford University and is also an honorary Consultant Physician in Infectious Diseases for the Oxford University NHS Trust. As a registered specialist in Tropical Medicine, he is a “médecin visiteur aux Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève.”
His main focus is clinical trials in falciparum and vivax malaria with an interest in the efficacy and safety of primaquine leading to the development of optimised age- and weight-based regimens of primaquine for the transmission blocking of Plasmodium falciparum and the radical cure of P. vivax. He holds several grants for this work and, with Dr. Julie Nguyen Pouplin, secured the EDCTP grant that has led to the birth of the Developing Paediatric Primaquine (DPP) project.
The DPP project aims to prequalify primaquine across a range of tablet strengths so that optimised, child-friendly primaquine regimens can be used in malaria control programmes to eliminate malaria.
Bob qualified in medicine at Guy’s Hospital, London, in 1981 and gained valuable clinical experience in the UK, Zimbabwe, Swaziland (Eswatini), Hong Kong and the USA. His research career started in 1995 when he spent three years in Indonesia running trials on the treatment and prophylaxis of malaria. This was followed by eight years at WHO/TDR managing multicentre clinical trials of artemisinin-based combinations (ACTs) that led to their recommendation by the WHO as first-line treatment for falciparum malaria and the prequalification of artesunate amodiaquine and artesunate mefloquine.
Bob remains clinically active and is registered in the UK as a specialist in Tropical Medicine and “Médecine Tropicale et Médecine des Voyages” in Switzerland.

Catherine TULEU, Docteur en Pharmacie, PhD, is Professor of Paediatric Pharmaceutics at the UCL School of Pharmacy, UK. Her research (over 100 papers; h = 24; ORCID 0000-0001-8384-357X)  is  inherently translational and ranges from formulation, process and methodology development to clinical implementation, integrating the following themes: children centric excipient research; reformulation and repurposing for better medicines for children; development of innovative age appropriate dosage forms (especially for under 5s); administration issues (co-administration with food/beverages & aids) and devices; and sensory pharmaceuticsTM (acceptability and in vitro/in vivo taste assessment).
She is the founder and chairperson of the European Paediatric Formulation Initiative (EuPFI), a consortium working on paediatric drug formulations.

Thibault Vallet, PhD, is a research scientist and project leader at ClinSearch. He is the co-inventor of CAST – ClinSearch Acceptability Score Test®, a novel data driven approach facilitating medicine design for optimal acceptability in vulnerable populations. CAST is used as part of this EDCTP project aiming to develop a paediatric primaquine formulation. Thibault holds a MSc in sensory science from the University of Lyon, and after working to prevent criminal misuse of psychoactive drugs for the French medicines agency, he joined ClinSearch and started his PhD on medicine acceptability at Arts et Métiers ParisTech in 2014. Seven years later, this innovative research project received a number of prizes and honours, inter alia, from the French Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences, the French Sensory Science Society and the European Paediatric Formulation Initiative (EuPFI) consortium. As research scientist and project leader at ClinSearch, Thibault coordinates international research projects, and supports pharmaceutical companies in designing and conducting clinical trials and RWE studies in order to demonstrate the acceptability of their medications and meet regulatory requirements. Today, Thibault is analysing meta-data from Japan, India, Norway, Germany, Morocco, and elsewhere. This represents a fresh opportunity to employ CAST to better understand the influence of these different cultures on medicines acceptability.