management team

Gathering the right Expertise in each seat

Florence Séjourné

Chief Executive Officer

Florence Séjourné joined Da Volterra as CEO in the summer of 2008.

She graduated from the “Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris” in 1994 with a major in biotechnology, and pursued her graduate studies at the University of Illinois in Pharmaceutical Sciences where she developed a novel targeted delivery peptide drug with therapeutic potential in cardiovascular and CNS fields. She then led the biotech department of Eurasanté one of the first French bioincubators and assisting start-up entrepreneurs. She rapidly got involved in the inception and co-founded Genfit, today one of the leading public European biotech companies in the cardiovascular and metabolic fields, where she was Chief Operating Officer, VP Business Development, and member of the Board from 1999 to 2008.

Florence Séjourné therefore brings to Da Volterra the experience of a successful entrepreneurial adventure, including her capacity to set up and lead an efficient and highly professional R&D organization, to raise private and public funds, and to structure and negociate deals with Pharmaceutical and Biotech Companies in a highly competitive international environment.

Jean de Gunzburg

PhD, Chief Scientific Officer

Jean de Gunzburg graduated from “Ecole Agronomique de Paris” before becoming a molecular and cell biologist who after a highly successful academic carrier decided to devote his experience and know-how to the development of Da Volterra.

After obtaining his Ph.D. in 1985 from the University of Paris 7 for work performed at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, Jean continued his training by a postdoctoral stay at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research (Cambridge, Massachusetts, associated with MIT). He became in 1988 Research Director at the CNRS and headed the Laboratory for Signal Transduction and Oncogenesis of Inserm at the Institut Curie in Paris until mid 2005. He has published over 70 articles in international journals in fields ranging from Biochemistry and Molecular Biology to Cell biology.

Jean de Gunzburg, as a seasoned scientist, brings to Da Volterra his wide expertise for conducting R&D programs, understanding finely at the molecular level diseases as well as drugs mode of action, developing adequate in vitro assays to model in vivo situations, optimizing both chemical and molecular analytical tools and biomarkers, and establishing in vivo proof of concept studies. Jean heads the R&D efforts of Da Volterra in close synergy with Antoine Andremont and François Lescure.

 

François Lescure

PharmD-PhD, Chief Operating Officer, Head of Pharmaceutical Development

François Lescure has been Chief Operating Officer at Da Volterra since 2005.

François Lescure holds a PharmD and a PhD in pharmaceutical sciences from the University of Geneva, one of the best European Universities for pharmaceutical technology. After a first experience at Merck and Co in the USA, François moved back to France, working for 8 years as Director of Pharmaceutical Development for Bristol Myers Squibb, where he was there in charge of the worldwide development of analgesia products. Major developments of new chemical entities as well as new drug delivery systems were achieved and registered in Europe and US under his tenure. In 1997, François Lescure joined  Biovector Therapeutics, a biotech company in Toulouse focused on innovative vaccine therapies, to manage R&D Operations from 1997 to 2002. The product pipeline of Biovector included prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines which were based on the delivery of proteins or peptides in proprietary drug delivery systems.

François Lescure, as a seasoned pharmaceutical professional, brings to Da Volterra his expertise in R&D projects management, drug delivery technologies and drug candidate development in both big pharmas and biotechs.