ISAR ANNOUNCES THE 2021 WILLIAM PRUSOFF AWARDEE, DR. DAVID DURANTEL
In 2001, ISAR endowed the first William Prusoff Memorial Award to Chris McGuigan, who developed the ProTides prodrug approach that has resulted in sofosbuvir. This Award is granted to an outstanding scientist not older than 45 years of age who has demonstrated dedication and excellence and future potential for contribution to the field and the society. It is a great pleasure to announce the 2021 William Prusoff Memorial Awardee, Dr. David Durantel.
David Durantel obtained his PhD in Molecular and Cellular Virology at the University of Montpellier in 1997. After three consecutive postdoctoral trainings, at Oxford Brookes University (with Pr Linda King and Robert Possee, UK), University of Oxford (with Pr R.aymond Dwek and Dr Nicole Zitzmann, UK), and INSERM (National Institute for Health and Medical Research; with Pr Fabien Zoulim), he obtained a tenured position in 2005 at INSERM, then his Habilitation to direct research in 2008 from the University of Lyon (UCBL), and was finally promoted Director of Research in 2016.
David has worked on drug discovery in the viral hepatitis field through all his training and career as an independent investigator, including both Direct Acting and Host-Targeting Agents (DAA and HTA, respectively). He currently leads a team at the International Center for Research in Infectiology studying HBV and HDV infections or co-infections and continues to contributes to the R&D of novel DAAs and HTAs.
He has authored or coauthored 110 PubMed-recorded articles and reviews, as well as numerous proceedings and book chapters. He is also an inventor in several issued patents. He acts as reviewers for many journals, including Gastroenterology, Gut, Hepatology, J. Hepatol, PlosPathogen, antiviral journals, among others.
Since 2014, he is associate editor for Antiviral Research, viral hepatitis section. Associated to this function, David has co-organized several international antiviral conferences. He was recently nominated to organize the 2022 edition of the International HBV meeting.
He contributes to the French coordination on viral hepatitis research at ANRS (French Agency for AIDS and Hepatitis Research), seats in the board of several ANRS “study section” and “concerted action” committees and routinely organizes workshops and conferences at the National level. He was member of the executive board of the French Association for Liver Studies (AFEF) between 2015-2018, and is an active member of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL).
ISAR is now honored to have David as the latest William Prusoff Memorial awardee, and we are all looking forward to his Award lecture during the virtual ICAR2021 coming March 22-26.
January 8, 2021