Eric Chatelain has extensive Research and Drug development experience gained from the academia and the industry, as well as management experience, and is well connected with international groups working on Neglected Diseases.

Eric graduated with a PhD in Biochemistry in 1993 at the INSA Lyon, France. Following five years in the academia (ICRF, London, UK and FMI/Novartis, Basel, Switzerland) as a Research Fellow, he joined the pharmaceutical industry (Spirig Pharma AG, Switzerland) in 1999. His focus was on Dermatology R&D and Eric led the Biopharmacy Research Lab (till 2003) before heading the Pre-clinical Department (till 2007). In that position, he gained extensive acquaintance with all the processes, workflows and interfaces involved in drug development; he was involved in project development and interacting with people of all disciplines at all levels. His activities led to major projects being taken on board for further clinical development.

Since joining DNDi (Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, a not-for-profit R&D organisation, whose focus is to develop drugs/treatments for the most neglected diseases) in 2007, Eric’s main role is the management of various projects/teams around the world working on the development of new drugs for neglected diseases. Until mid-2009 he was responsible for all screening/early discovery activities before joining the Chagas disease team and taking on responsibility for all Chagas discovery and pre-clinical projects. During that period he was responsible for the development for high-throughput screening assay (HTS) to assess compounds for their activity against T. cruzi, the pathogen involved in Chagas disease and led DNDi global current effort in lead optimisation for that disease with major and recognised institutions in Australia, Brazil, Europe and South Korea. In 2011, he played an essential role in restructuring of DNDi led optimisation programs and now co-leads the entire DNDi lead optimisation effort.