Conferences

Speaker's resume and abstract

Frederic Dorandeu

Brig Gen Professor Dr (PharmD, PhD) Frederic Dorandeu is currently deputy commander of the Armed Forces Biomedical Research Institute (IRBA) in Brétigny-sur-Orge (France) and the professor, chair holder for research at the Ecole du Val-de-Grâce in Paris. He was previously in charge of the Toxicology and chemical risks research section then of the CBRN defence research division at IRBA.  His main area of expertise is the treatment of seizures and status epilepticus and neuroprotective strategies following nerve agent poisoning. He holds French army CBRN defence and foreign CBRN casualty management qualifications. For 7 years he chaired the NATO COMEDS/NSA CBRN medical working group giving him a bird’s eye view of the domain. He is a full member of the French academy of pharmacy. He had been a member of the scientific then organizing committees of the last editions of the international conference CBRNe - Research and innovation.

Olga Vybornova

Dr. Olga Vybornova is PhD, Senior researcher at the Centre for Applied Molecular Technologies, Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain-CTMA), Belgium. She is responsible for research, coordination and management of H2020 SEC-21–GM-2016-2017 project eNOTICE – European Network of CBRN Training Centres. With the background in artificial intelligence and knowledge engineering her main research interests are in the field of information communication technology for crisis management and security applications, multi-source multi-format data integration, decision making support systems as well as innovation management practices and support for security end-users.

eNOTICE – European Network of CBRN Training Centers: just-in-time training and evolving training methodologies for first responders.
The talk addresses emerging training methodologies for CBRN first responders of various disciplines and just-in-time training methods in the situations when lots of educational content must be delivered in the shortest possible time. Opportunities and challenges for training centres caused by COVID-19 crisis are discussed, e.g. the impact on organization of training and exercises, change of training curriculum, who makes decisions what and whom to teach, and other aspects. The talk summarizes findings and conclusions of the network webinars on the topic.  

N .BEHARY, A. PERWUELZ

Anne PERWUELZ is full Professor in Textile Chemistry at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Industries Textiles, Roubaix. She is a chemical engineer and she received the PhD (1983) in Material Sciences from the INSA institute in Toulouse (F). Her main research interests concerns physicochemical aspects in textile engineering and in surface treatment. For the last 15 years, most of her research work is dedicated to eco-design to promote Sustainable Development in textile industry and retail. She is co-founder of Tex&Care, the circular fashion chair.

N BEHARY MASSIKA is Associate Professor with Habilitation to direct phDs. She is a textile Engineer and obtained her phD in Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry in 1999. She teaches Master Level student engineers at ENSAIT, Roubaix, in the field of dyeing, finishing and textile functionalization. Her research work is mainly based on medical and antibacterial textiles using Eco and Biotechnologies. For the last years, most of her research work is dedicated to immobilization of enzymes on textile for pollutant degradation as well as study of eco and biotechnologies for contaminant removal before recycling.

Recycling protective garments processes and techniques used for decontaminating and removing unwanted organic substances – A review
At the end of their life, garments can be recycled through various processes: mechanical, thermal or chemical. A state of the art of the different opportunities will be presented, including the industrial maturity and new developments at the research level. One of the limits for recycling is the presence of contaminants.

Elimination of additional substances on textiles is often needed to yield better quality recycled materials for re-use as raw material. Our team has demonstrated that the removal of additional organic substances such as dyes, pigments, sizing, spin finishes, chemical finishes, can be carried out by techniques such as microwaves, plasma, UV light, Fenton reaction, Ozone, and biotechnologies such as enzymes etc…These techniques have equally been investigated for decontamination of textiles such as those used in PPE.

This presentation will review technique by technique, to present their effectiveness in decontaminating protective garments for their re-use or their recycling. For their re-use, PPE textiles used for health application (protection), need to maintain their structure to be effective in filtering bioaerosols or to protect from biological splashes. If these conditions are not met, other pathways can be proposed for their recycling.

REFERENCES

• S. YASIN et AL. “In situ degradation of organophosphorus flame retardant on cellulosic fabric using advanced oxidation process: a study on degradation and characterization”, Polymer Degradation and Stability, 2016, 126:1–8
• M. MOrshed et al. Modification of fibrous membrane for organic and pathogenic contaminants removal: from design to application. RSC Advances, 10(22), 13155-13173. (2020)
• A. S. Powar et al. Application of Ozone Treatment for the Decolorization of the Reactive-Dyed Fabrics in a Pilot-Scale Process—Optimization through Response Surface Methodology, Sustainability, 12, (2), 1-14(2020)
• Other references:
• Microwave and heat-based decontamination of N95 filtering facepiece respirators, a systematic review, Journal of Hospital infection 106(2020), 536-553
• Disinfection of N95 respirators with Ozone, doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.28.20097402, BMJ Open Respiratory Research
• Decontaminating N95 and SN95 masks with ultraviolet germicidal irradiation does not impair mask efficacy and safety, J Hosp Infect 2020 Sep; 106 (1) 163-175

Arnaud Fontanet

Arnaud Fontanet is a medical epidemiologist (MD Paris V; MPH, DrPH, Harvard School of Public Health) specialized in infectious diseases epidemiology. In 2002, he joined Institut Pasteur in Paris to launch the Emerging Diseases Epidemiology unit. There, his focus has been on viral hepatitis and emerging viruses. In 2014, he was appointed as Director of the newly created Centre for Global Health at Institut Pasteur. Arnaud Fontanet is also Professor of Public Health at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, where he is Director and co-founder of the Pasteur-Cnam School of Public Health, and was named in 2018-19 Guest Public Health Professor at the Collège de France. In March 2020, he was appointed to the Scientific Council advising the French government on the COVID-19 crisis.

Online tools for assessment of factors associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection, and evaluation of new prophylactic and therapeutic drug regimens against COVID-19.
The COVID-19 epidemic has triggered the development of new tools for epidemiological and clinical research. Online questionnaires were used to perform epidemiological studies aiming at estimating SARS-CoV-2 antibody prevalence (SAPRIS-SERO study, with the help of self-sampling dried blood spots), and at identifying factors associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection (ComCor study), reaching in limited tome more than 100,000 participants each. Likewise, clinical trials have been performed remotely, using internet based recruitment, mailing of study medication, and online monitoring of patients. This presentation will address the challenges and benefits associated with these new approaches to epidemiological and clinical research.

Benoit Deprez

Benoit Deprez received a degree of pharmaceutical sciences and a PhD in medicinal chemistry, as well as an MBA from Edhec business school. With André Tartar, he created the High Throughput Chemistry laboratory of the Institut Pasteur that became in 1997 the chemistry department of Cerep. In 1999, He was hired by Devgen, a Belgian start-up in Gent (Flanders). From 1995 on, he set up several collaborations with biotech and pharmaceutical companies.  Benoît is currently Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at U. Lille and director of Inserm U1177 . His research interests focus on target validation, medicinal chemistry and pharmacokinetic. Benoit is correspondent member of the Académie Nationale de Pharmacie. In 2013, he founded APTEEUS with Terence Beghyn. In 2016, APTEEUS was a recipient of Individualized Medecine Award at the Concours Mondial d’Innovation. In March 2019, he was appointed as Scientific Director of the Institut Pasteur de Lille. 143 publications, H37, i10 93, 30 patents.

Discovery tools in preparedness and response to NRBC threats.
The communication will present state-of-the-art high throughput miniaturized technologies that are currently used to rapidly identify pharmacological agents directed against infectious or toxic compounds in the drug discovery arena. It will examine strengths and weaknesses of these technologies in different contexts, such as preparedness to pre-identified toxicological or infectious threats or fast response to previously unknown threats of high or low acuteness.

Camille Locht

Camille Locht is Research Director at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) and was the founding director of the Center for Infection and Immunity of Lille at the Institut Pasteur de Lille (IPL). He has obtained his PhD at the Catholic University of Leuven. After a 3-years post-doctoral stay at the NIH, USA, he joined SmithKline–Beecham, and is since 1989 at IPL, where he was the Scientific Director from 2002 to 2013. His main interest is in bacterial pathogenesis and vaccine development against respiratory disease, including pertussis and tuberculosis.

Nasal COVID-19 T cell-based vaccine.
While most currently available vaccines against COVID-19 are based on the spike protein with the purpose of inducing virus-neutralizing serum antibodies, several lines of evidence indicate that resident memory T cells also play an important role in protection against this disease. We are using a live attenuated nasal pertussis vaccine as a platform to induce these T cell responses. The nasal pertussis vaccine is currently in advanced clinical development for the pertussis indication and was shown safe and immunogenic in humans. The vaccine was found to induce CD4+ and CD8+ resident memory T cells in the nasal tissue and in the lungs. We therefore are engineering this vaccine using three different carrier mechanisms to display SARS-CoV2 CD4+ and CD8+ T cell epitopes at its surface. Nasal administration of this vaccine is therefore expected to elicit the desired local T cell responses, thereby protecting against SARS-CoV2, including its spike protein variants. Advantages of this vaccine include its ease of administration, low production cost, long-term stability even at room temperature and its important scaling capacity.

Laura Petersen

Laura PETERSEN received her MS in Engineering and Management of the Environment and Sustainable Development (IMEDD) from the University of Technology in Troyes (UTT) in 2014. She worked for 3 years as an Environment, Resilience and Risk Engineer at the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) where she was in charge of managing the EU H2020 IMPROVER project, focusing on critical infrastructure resilience. She then worked at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) for 1 year as the manager for the EU H2020 project IDEAAL, focusing on the internationalisation and sustainability of the French Research Infrastructure GANIL. She also has previous experience working on European projects related to sustainable development and published several papers in peer-reviewed journals. Currently she is Senior Security Research Advisor within the International Union of Railways’ Security Division.

EU H2020 Project PROACTIVE (PReparedness against CBRNE threats through cOmmon Approaches between security praCTItioners and the VulnerablE civil society) aims to enhance societal CBRNe (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosives) preparedness. During a CBRNe incident, the general public, including vulnerable groups, react and interact with practitioners in ways that are unique and particularly challenging. Previous research has demonstrated that effective communication strategies instead of control strategies enhance appropriate behaviours from citizens during crises, including CBRNE incidents. At the PROACTIVE Covid-19 Webinar held back in April 2020, several members of the Civil Society Advisory Board (CSAB) shared with practitioners some key lessons learned: the need to create new SOPs (e.g. for persons with Autism being tested), the lack of inclusive communication (e.g. sign language, text-to-speech) and that remote learning is not accessible for all. During this presentation we will highlight the most important challenges collected during the webinar. This will facilitate the transfer of good practice from the Covid-19 crisis towards the wider CBRNE domain. Going forward, the PROACTIVE project will combine the lessons learned from the Covid-19 crisis with other specific CBRN recommendations produced in the first half of the project: e.g. providing information in multiple languages, pictographic form, and sign language, or conducting information campaigns and education to build CBRNe public knowledge. These recommendations will further contribute to the future project outputs: the web collaborative platform and mobile app for LEAs, the mobile app for citizens, the policy making toolkit and  the pre-incident public information materials for CBRNe terrorism.

Ludovic Guillot