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2011 - 02 - 16 Lecture of Prof. Erik De Clercq
CRP-Santé is delighted to invite you to the conference “The Holý Grail: the discovery of the acyclic nucleoside phosphonates” by Prof. Erik De Clercq on March 17, 2011 from 5.00 pm to 6.30 pm at the amphitheatre of Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg (CHL). Prof. Erik De Clercq has been working for 40 years in research on antiviral therapy. His outstanding results drawn on a close collaboration between chemistry (Antonin Holý), medicine (Erik De Clercq) and industry (J.C. Martin). See the invitation See the reply form - We kindly ask you to register for this conference by sending an email to florence.henry@crp-sante.lu
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Erik De Clercq, M.D., Ph.D. has been Chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology of the Medical School at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven) as well as Chairman of the Board of the Rega Institute for Medical Research, until September 2006 when he has retired. He is currently still President of the Rega Foundation and a member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine, a member of the Academia Europaea and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has also been the titular of the Prof. P. De Somer Chair for Microbiology.
He has been teaching the courses of Cell Biology, Biochemistry and Microbiology at the K.U.Leuven (and Kortrijk) Medical School, until September 2006 and continued to teach part of the Biochemistry course at the K.U.Leuven Campus Kortrijk until 2009. While an Emeritus Professor at his own University, since 2007, he has been teaching the course of “Biochemistry at the Service of Medicine” at the Faculty of Sciences as the University of South Bohemia (Česke Budĕjovice, CzechRepublic). Professor De Clercq received in 1996 the Hoechst Marion Roussel (now called “Aventis”) award (American Society for Microbiology), in 2000 the Maisin Prize for Biomedical Sciences (National Science Foundation, Belgium) and in 2010 the Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research for his pioneering efforts in the field of antiviral research. He is a honorary doctor of several Universities [i.e. Ghent (Belgium), Athens (Greece), Ferrara (Italy), Shandong (Jinan, China), Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic), Budĕjovice (Czech Republic) and Tours (France)]. In 2008 he was elected European Inventor of the Year (Life time achievement award).
His scientific interests are in the antiviral chemotherapy field, and, in particular, the development of new antiviral agents for various viral infections, including herpes simplex virus (HSV), varicella-zoster virus (VZV), cytomegalovirus (CMV), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B virus (HBV), human papilloma virus (HPV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV).
He has (co)-discovered a number of antiviral drugs, currently used in the treatment of HSV infections (valaciclovir,Valtrex®, Zelitrex®), VZV infections (brivudin, Zostex®, Brivirac®, Zerpex®), CMV infections (cidofovir, Vistide®), HBV infections (adefovir dipivoxil, Hepsera®), and HIV infections (AIDS) (tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, marketed as Viread®, and, in combination with emtricitabine, as Truvada® and, in combination with both emtricitabine and efavirenz, as Atripla®). Viread® has also been approved for the treatment of HBV infections (chronic hepatitis B).