OSE Immunotherapeutics SA announced the appointment of six leading international experts to its newly formed Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) to guide the company in its next phases of growth and scientific orientations. The SAB, chaired by Pr. Wolf-Hervé Fridman who will lead the Board's reflections and discussions, will comprise the followings: Prof. Wolf-Hervé Fridman, MD, Chairman; Professor Emeritus of Immunology at the ‘Université de Paris' Medical School in Paris, France Dr. Fridman's research focused on the analysis of the tumor microenvironment.

Since 2005, his studies have changed the paradigm of host/cancer interactions by demonstrating that the ‘immune contexture”, taking in account the functionality, the location and the density of the immune infiltrate in colorectal tumors, is the major prognostic factor for human cancers. He is involved in the development of bioinformatic tools to quantify cells of the tumor microenvironment which are being successfully applied to predict prognosis and immunotherapeutic responses in Renal Cell Cancers, Colorectal Cancers or Sarcomas. One major achievement is the establishment of an immune classification of soft tissue sarcoma tumors that allowed to demonstrate that Tertiary Lymphoid Structures (TLS) and B cell signatures, better than T cells, predicted favorable clinical outcome and therapeutic response to anti-PD- 1 therapy in patients.

These findings were recently extended to other cancers treated with immune check-point blockers showing that plasma cells generated inside TLS produce anti-tumor antibodies associated with patient's response to immunotherapy. They open the way for novel immune-based tools for efficient prognosis and therapy of cancers. Dr. Sophie Brouard; Immunologist and Doctor in veterinary sciences, Director of Research at the Institut National de la Santé et Recherche Médicale (INSERM, National Institute for Health and Medical Research) in Nantes, France Dr. Sophie Brouard is Director of Research in the INSERM unit located in Nantes (France) and is working in immunology (auto-immune diseases and transplantation).

She is an immunologist interested in fundamental and translational questions on the process of inflammation, chronicity, rejection and tolerance. Previously, she served as Director of the Centaure national RTRS (Réseau Thématique de Recherche et de Soins) transplantation network in France. Dr. Brouard received the Bronze medal from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in 2004, the price from “Medicine Academy” in 2012, the medal of innovation of the CNRS in 2020 and the “Trophée” of “Academy-Biotech partnership” from the Nantes University in 2021.

She funded three companies, TclandExpression, Effimune and BioMadvanced. Bernard Malissen, PhD; Group Leader at Centre d'Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy and Founding-Director of Center for Immunophenomics, Marseille, France Dr. Bernard Malissen pioneered the use of gene transfer approaches to dissect the function of Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) molecules. He also succeeded reconstructing a full T cell antigen receptor (TCR) complex and demonstrated that the present-day signaling subunits associated with antigen receptors stem from a common primordial building block.

He provided the first evidence for chromosomal inversion during TCR gene rearrangements. His team was also the first to elucidate the atomic structure of an alloreactive TCR in complex with its peptide-MHC ligand, providing a molecular explanation for the basis of transplant rejection and TCR binding-degeneracy. His recent interests extend to dendritic cells and macrophages, leading him to disentangle their functional complexity primarily in the skin.

To make sense of the complexity of the signal transduction networks involved in T cell activation, he recently used “omic” approaches to provide a systems level picture of the TCR signal transduction network and of its tuning by costimulatory and coinhibitory receptors. Bernard Malissen published 400 scientific papers, (h-factor of 94) and ranked for the last 5 years among the most highly cited researchers in Immunology. Dr. Myriam Merad, MD, PhD; Director of the Precision Immunology Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and the Director of the Mount Sinai Human Immune Monitoring Center (HIMC), US.

Dr. Merad is an internationally acclaimed physician-scientist and a leader in the fields of dendritic cell and macrophage biology with a focus on their contribution to human diseases. Dr. Merad identified the tissue resident macrophage lineage and revealed its distinct role in organ physiology and pathophysiology. She established the contribution of this macrophage lineage to cancer progression and inflammatory diseases and is now working on the development of novel macrophage-targeted therapies for these conditions.

In addition to her work on macrophages, Dr. Merad is known for her work on dendritic cells, a group of cells that control adaptive immunity. She identified a new subset of dendritic cells, which is now considered a key target of antiviral and antitumor immunity. Dr. Merad leads the Precision Immunology Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine (PrIISM) to bring immunology discoveries to the clinic.