Keynotes

Pr. Driss Boussaoud

Neuro-Technologies : from neurons to brain-machine interface

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photo_two Driss Boussaoud, Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Marseille (France) - driss.boussaoud@univ-amu.fr
Pr. Driss Boussaoud, Cognitive Neuroscientist at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, France), Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes, UMR 1106 Inserm and Aix-Marseille University. driss.boussaoud@univ-amu.fr
Currently Invited Professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy, Univ. Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah (Fes, Morocco).
Driss Boussaoud was born in the Middle Atlas of Morocco, in 1958. He received his B.S with distinction in Biology & Geology in 1980 from Mohamed Vth University (Rabat, Morocco), and a PhD in Neurosciences in 1983 from Claude Bernard University (Lyon, France). After a short stay in Morocco as an Assistant Professor, he joined the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda (MD, USA), for a 6 year stay (1986-1992). In 1992, he joined the CNRS (Lyon, France) where he has developed his research program on the emergence of function in brain networks using neurophysiology, brain imaging and neuropsychology both in health and disease.
Driss Boussaoud has made significant contributions to the anatomy and physiology of visual pathways, the processing of gaze signals, attention and action interactions, and the brain dynamics during learning. His current work focuses on social learning addressing questions such as: how social context modulates our brain functioning? and how do we learn from others? He has authored and co-authored over 100 articles and book chapters and gave numerous international conferences. His work has been cited more than 4000 times, with an average citation per item of 63 times, h index of 32 (Web of Science). He also published book chapters, and.
Driss Boussaoud was promoted as CNRS Directeur de Recherche since 1999, and has created and acted as Director of the Mediterranean Institute for Cognitive Neurosciences (INCM, UMR6193, Marseille), Member of the National Advisory Committee (2004-2009), PI and Coordinator of the French-Moroccan Neuroscience Consortium (2008-2015; http://gdri-neuroscience-france-maroc.scicog.fr/), and PI and Coordinator of N€UROMED, FP7 International Cooperation, REGPOT-2009-2 (2009-2013). Since 2008, Driss Boussaoud has played an active role in the development of cooperation and exchanges among Mediterranean neuroscientists. In particular, he founded the Mediterranean Neuroscience Society – MNS http://www.mnsociety.net/, and has acted as its 1st President (2009-2012).
For details see http://ins.univ-amu.fr/research-teams/team-member/d.boussaoud.
Contact: Driss.Boussaoud@univ-amu.fr

Dr. Samir Iqbal

Clinical Applications of Nanotechnology

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photo_two Dr. Samir Iqbal is an Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Arlington (UT-Arlington), USA.
His work focuses on nanotechnology applications in solid-state sensors, developing novel nano-bio interfaces, and development of cancer screening devices with high sensitivity and selectivity.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Socety of Chmeistry and a senior member of IEEE. He serves as a Distinguished Lecturer for IEEE-Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) and is on the EMBS Technical Committee on BioMEMS. He is also member of American Physical Society, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Biomedical Engineering Society, Biophysical Society, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, European Society for Nanomedicine, and Sigma Xi, to name a few. He was a recipient of US National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2009. In 2013, UT-Arlington selected him for Honorable Mention for Best Academic Advisor Award. In 2014, the College of Engineering at UT-Arlington nominated him for President's Award for Excellence in Teaching. He was awarded Sigma Xi Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award in 2014. In November 2014, he was inducted into National Academy of Innovators by UT-Arlington. In 2015, he was given the Best Research Mentor Award. In 2016, he was awarded Research Excellence Award by his university.

Pr. Adnane Remmal

Natural promotor, an alternative to antibiotics in animal feeding. From the laboratory to the market

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Pr. Adnane Adnane Remmal of Université Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah, Fès
with expertise in Aquaculture, Food Science, Animal Science. He is the winner of the 2015 edition of the Innovation Award for Africa.








Abderrahim LACHGAR

Invectys' telomerase DNA vaccine, a major innovation in Cancer treatment

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Chief Business Officer, INVECTYS S.A.
PhD in Immuno-virology from Université Pierre & Marie Curie, Paris
MS in Science and Technology forecasting and Assessment
MS in Business Management
Over 20 years experience as senior executive in biopharmaceutical industry
Advisor and member of Strategic Baords of several European biotech companies
Member of the Board of Directors at Medicen (Paris Region global healthcare competitiveness cluster)


Zaki Sellam

Value Creation from academy to Pharma/Biotech industry, entrepreneurial perspective.

photo_two Zaki Sellam, Founder and CEO of Avicenna Oncology GmbH (Basel, Switzerland)
"Throughout his career, Zaki has worked in scientific, executive and board functions. With more than 15 years of international experience, Zaki has supported several innovative biotech start-up from their creation & structuration to their financing & partnering activities. Meanwhile, he co-founded various Biotech ventures such as Avicenna Oncology GmbH (Antibody Drug Conjugate field, Basel, Switzerland), CarboMimetics SAS (GlycoChemistry field, Paris, France), Atfal Pharma AG (Paediatrics field, Basel, Switzerland). Zaki holds a Master of Science degree in Biotechnology Engineering (National School of Biotechnology, Bordeaux, FR), and a Master of Business Administration (Institute of Business Administration, Poitiers, FR). He is completing this year a PhD in Strategic Management within Pharma Industry (Universiry of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK).

Nabila Seddiki

Regulatory T cells in health and disease : from basic research through innovation and towards clinical investigations.

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photo_two Nabila Seddiki is a Senior Lecturer at the Paris-Est Créteil University (UPEC).
She holds an INSERM “Chaire d’Excellence en Immunologie et Maladies Infectieuses”. She joined the Vaccine Research Institute (VRI/UPEC) end of 2010. Before that she was a Research Fellow at the Centenary Institute (University of Sydney) and then a Senior Scientist at the National Centre for HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research (University of New South Wales).
Dr Seddiki's research interests focus on the cellular and molecular characterisation of T-cell subsets. She is particularly interested in investigating the dynamics of antigen-specific T regulatory, T follicular helper and effector CD4+ T-cell subsets in viral infections. The highlight of her career so far is the discovery of a new means of accurately identifying human natural Tregs by using expression of cell surface CD25 (IL-2R-α) and CD127 (IL-7R-α). This work has been patented, licensed and is currently commercialized for research and clinical use worldwide. More recently, her work led to the identification and isolation of antigen-specific Tregs. Lately, Dr Seddiki has been investigating the role of microRNA and chromatin remodeling in the regulation of target molecules during HIV-1 infection. All these studies aim at understanding HIV pathogenesis and deciphering the mechanisms that lead to CD4+ T cell depletion during infection.

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Pr. Driss Boussaoud

Neuro-Technologies : from neurons to brain-machine interface

Abstract: Neuroscience research seeks to unravel how the brain works and how it dys-functions in a variety of neurological and psychiatric diseases. Advances in this area are crucial, not only for medical intervention in patients, but also for education, social sciences and humanities in general. For example, how your brain makes decisions to buy things in the supermarket is relevant to economy. Thus new research fields have merged: neuro-economy, neuro-marketing, neuro-esthetics, neuro-education, neuro-rehabilitation, neuro-robotics... Because of the complexity of the brain as an organ (about 10-11 brain cells, and 9 times glial cells, with trillions of connections between them), a multidisciplinary approach is required. Thus, the neurosciences interact intensely with a wide rang of disciplines including cognitive science, psychology, rehabilitation medicine, educational science, electrical engineering, robotics, computer science, mathematics and physics. The cross talk between biologically driven questions and mathematical modeling, in particular, has led to important scientific breakthroughs. I will summarize the research path that has taken neuroscientists from basic questions aimed at understanding how neurons work in the brain using animal models, to applications using brain-computer or brain-machine interfaces (BCI, BMI). Nowadays, these applications are helping amputees to efficiently use prosthetic devices, i.e. neuroprosthetics, or handicapped patients to gain their autonomy. In short, I will review about 40 years of neurophysiological research whose aim was to simply understand how the single neurons work, and chart the functions of the brain in various domains (action, perception, cognition and emotion). The discovery in the monkey brain of neurons that discharge long before an action is produced (e.g. during the preparation to reach and grasp objects), has been exploited by researchers to trigger the desired action before it occurs. Ultimately, peoples’ thoughts can be read and decoded in real time, and used for controlling artificial devices (for more information, see Krucoff et al., 2016; Allami et al., 2014).
Related references: Krucoff, Max O.; Rahimpour, Shervin; Slutzky, Marc W.; Edgerton, V. Reggie; Turner, Dennis A. (2016-01-01). "Enhancing Nervous System Recovery through Neurobiologics, Neural Interface Training, and Neurorehabilitation". Neuroprosthetics: 584.doi:10.3389/fnins.2016.00584.

Dr. Samir Iqba

Clinical Applications of Nanotechnology

Abstract: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) enter into the peripheral bloodstream from primary tumor mass. Their detection can help in cancer diagnosis, prognosis, disease monitoring, and personalized therapy. However, these are very rare in blood at the onset of disease and thus hard to isolate. The heterogeneity of CTCs in biomarker expression, challenges in the isolation efficiency and specificity make their isolation difficult. Nanotechnology is helping create innovative physical systems for single-cell analysis that use or mimic biological interactions, and emulate physiological conditions. Such engineered single-cell analysis approaches has given new insights about metastasis and can be important to tackle early cancer detection challenges. Rapid and label-free capturing of diseased cells with robust surface functionalizations has opened new research areas focused on cancer screening at early stages. This talk will provide an overview on detection, sorting and isolation of rare cells with nanotechnologies and microfluidics.

Dr. Nabila Seddiki

Regulatory T cells in health and disease : from basic research through innovation and towards clinical investigations.

Abstract: The role of regulatory T cells (Tregs) in inflammatory conditions is ambiguous and their systematic monitoring in vaccination along with effector T-cells is not instinctive. Recent studies from the cancer field clearly showed that Tregs suppress vaccine-induced immune responses and correlate with poor clinical benefit. In HIV infection, Tregs are needed during acute infection to preserve tissue integrity from an overwhelmed activation, but are not beneficial in chronic infection as they suppress anti-HIV responses. Current assays used to evaluate vaccine-induced specific responses are limited as they do not take into account antigen-specific Tregs. However, new assays, which allow for the simultaneous detection of a full range of Th-responses including antigen-specific Tregs responses, can overcome these issues. My talk will focus on the role of Tregs in therapy and vaccination and will review the recent available tools to monitor them. I will tell you the story of our own research experience that led to the discovery of a new means to accurately identifying Tregs in humans.