Management Team
Valérie Autier, PhD, CEO/CSO, Founder & Business Development
Valérie Autier co-founded the company in March 2009 and serves Metabrain Research as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chief scientific Officer (CSO).
Combining about 15 Years of research and management experience in pharmaceutical industry, her background led her to shape the company’s creation and innovative vision as a sustainable company placing scientific excellence and human relations as the key success factors to address the current challenges the pharmaceutical industry faces.
Prior to join Metabrain Research, Valérie was head of department in charge of drug discovery optimization and preclinical development for projects targeting the metabolic disorders at Merck Serono . She led key projects from preclinical to clinical stage (proof of concept) and managed many pharmacological program s aiming at determining the potential efficacy of new drug targets. Valérie obtained her PHD in cellular and molecular biology from the University of Paris in 1999.
Micheline Kergoat, PhD, Head of Concepts and Partnering, Founder
Micheline is a world-class expert in diabetes physiopathology, author of more than forty publications, in particular characterizing the GK rat model as a model for naturally occurring diabetes. She provides our partners and our teams with high-level advice regarding the choice of models, experimental design, data analysis as well as project management and general scientific knowledge. Prior to joining Metabrain, Micheline worked at Merck and Janssen laboratories after her initial career in academia. Her network of scientists in the metabolic disease field is important to us as a PRO driving private/public cooperation. Micheline has a PhD in Nutrition from Université Paris VI.
Franck Lepifre, PhD, Head of Chemistry, Founder
Franck’s experience at working in pharma and CROs on both sides of the Atlantic gave him the chance to learn the best medicinal chemistry and innovation management practices. Prior to joining Metabrain, Franck headed Medicinal Chemistry Teams working in the diabetes field at Merck-Serono and managed contract research with Biotechs and a Big Pharma in diverse disease areas while holding positions of Lab Operations Committee Chairman at Dalton Pharma Services (Toronto, Canada). Franck obtained his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from ICOA (Université d’Orléans, France) for which he was awarded the Fournier - SFC national prize. He received post-doctoral training in Microwave-assisted parallel solution phase synthesis at York University (Toronto, Canada).
Christine Charon, PhD, Head of Biology, Founder
Christine Charon is a pharmaceutical scientist with over ten years experience in the research and development, of pharmaceutical product therapeutics for insulin resistance, types 2 diabetes, and obesity. Christine has extensive expertise in Medium Throughput Screening, functional and characterization assays and in the follow up of pre clinical research projects as Leader Project Manager. Christine’s previous corporate experiences includes positions in drug discovery at Merck KgAa in Biochemistry. She received her Ph.D. in Pathophysiology, Molecular & Cellular Biology of nutritional & inflammatory diseases from Paris VI University and received post-doctoral training in molecular biology, cell biology and physiology in Germany (Max-Planck Institute, Bad Nauheim) and in US (NIH, Bethesda, MA).
Sophie Raynal, PhD, Biochemistry, Head of Molecular and Cell Biology (BMCB)
Sophie’s has worked within both academic and industrial research teams on a variety of disease areas, from oncology to pulmonary diseases including endocrinology and metabolic disorders. She is most specialized in target identification and characterization as well as development of cellular model to answer to a pathological dilemma. She has therefore accumulated a comprehensive array of skills which enables our MBCB unit to design and perform such a wide variety of assays. She has a PhD in toxicology.
Annick Audet, Head of Pharmacology
Annick has managed teams of pharmacologists for more than 17 years and thus is one of our key assets to plan and execute a heavy workload of highly expert profiling experiments. Prior to joining Metabrain Research she was head of the in vivo pharmacology team working on new metabolic targets at Merck and Merck Serono and contributed to research projects including two projects in clinical phase II. Annick developed several in vivo and in vitro technologies and new animal models directly reproducing metabolic disorders. Annick holds a Master in Physiology from the University of Poitiers.