Fender Team

Team leader : Pascal Fender

FIGHTING RESPIRATORY INFECTIONS: ADENOVIRUSES, TARGETS OR TOOLS?

Adenoviruses are non-enveloped DNA viruses that infect many animal species. In humans, Adenoviruses are responsible for acute respiratory infections, sometimes fatal, and no specific treatment exists to date. Paradoxically, Adenoviruses are also the most widely used vectors in human gene therapy clinical trials and have been approved very rapidly in anti-COVID vaccination (Vaxzevria from AstraZeneca, and Jcovden from J&J/Janssen).

The Fender’s team has the goal of using the results obtained in the laboratory and exploiting them to propose societal solutions in the field of vaccinology and targeted antiviral therapies. You will discover by clicking on the icons below: (i) how our biochemical and structural research on adenoviral receptors leads us to the screening of antiviral molecules or (ii) how a non-infectious particle derived from adenoviruses has been modified to serve as a universal vaccine platform that has been validated in pre-clinical infectious diseases (SARS-CoV-2) and in cancer (melanoma).