Odile LeRoy

Odile Y Leroy, MD, MPH, is the Executive Director of the European Vaccine Initiative, an European Product Development Partnership committed to development of vaccines against diseases of poverty. She began her career in both France and Africa and observing neonatal and adolescent deaths due to tetanus propelled her to move from medical practice to vaccine research, convinced that the vaccine was the solution to avoid all this vast suffering in the world at that time. She started with implementation of tetanus vaccination in pregnant women in Senegal, and was investigator on the High-titer measles vaccine efficacy trial in Senegal, funded by the Task force on Child Survival.  She was also consultant for UNICEF, WHO, and John Snow Inc, to assess vaccination programs in Madagascar, Senegal, and Haiti.  From 1990 to 1996 she was international project leader at Sanofi Pasteur of recombinant, live attenuated, and combined measles vaccines, oral subunit cholera vaccine, and yellow-fever vaccine and from 1996 to 2000 Corporate Clinical Director under Prof Stanley Plotkin’s leadership, responsible for the clinical development of airborne vaccines, e.g., pneumococcal conjugate, varicella (and zoster), influenza and para-influenzae, RSV, meningococcal conjugate vaccines.

Since 2002 she has been leading European organizations, first European Malaria Vaccine Initiative (2002-2004), the European Developing Countries Clinical Trial Partnership (2005-2006), and then The European Vaccine Initiative (EVI) (2007-now). She has been a member of the Science Board of the Brighton Collaboration (2004-2008), of the WHO measles aerosol product development group (2006-2013), a member of the Expert Advisory Group of FP5 and FP6 on Health R&D Directorate at European Commission. She is member of the scientific board of the Global Immunization and Vaccine Research Forum (WHO/NIH/Bill Melinda Gates Foundation).

Dr. Leroy has published widely on vaccine development and has presented in approximately hundred international conferences. In the last ten years she has organized more than 20 workshops addressing harmonization on immune-assays, safety assessment, big data, system biology, animal models, adjuvant, human challenge trials, and other aspects of vaccine research and development. She is leading the European Vaccine Research and Development Infrastructure TRANSVAC, designing the Roadmap for European Vaccine R&D Infrastructure and the Roadmap for European Vaccine R&D Innovation