UCSF QBI Congratulates Nevan Krogan, Ph.D., as a Recipient of Prestigious French Legion of Honor Award and Welcomes New, Comprehensive Relationship with Institut Pasteur

– Two Academic Powerhouses form Institut Pasteur-UCSF QBI Center of Excellence in Emerging Diseases with Planned Operations/Locations in San Francisco and Paris –

SAN FRANCISCO and PARIS, Oct. 27, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — UC San Francisco (UCSF) Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) today announced that Nevan Krogan, Ph.D., Founder of QBI’s Coronavirus Research Group (QCRG) and Director of QBI, was awarded the highest honor in France, the Legion of Honor, in a ceremony in Paris. The honor was bestowed on Dr. Krogan for his leadership in forming an international research collaboration across academic and industry organizations around the world and for their significant scientific contributions utilizing a novel methodology of identifying the viral modifications of human proteins that fueled SARS-CoV-2 pathology to identify potential treatments against COVID-19.

Frédéric Jung, Consul General of France in San Francisco, noted, “Presenting Dr. Krogan with France’s highest distinction is an expression of gratitude of our country towards him, given his leadership in building innovative cooperation projects between France and the US, in particular between QBI and the Institut Pasteur, both international centers of excellence in biosciences.”

The Legion of Honor is the highest French decoration and one of the most famous in the world. For two centuries, it has been presented on behalf of the Head of State to reward the most deserving citizens in all fields of interest.

Stringent criteria are used to determine qualifications for the Legion of Honor, including:

• Eminence of services: the ability to show quality of services, of actions, or of demanding and measurable commitments.
• A common benefit: having served the good of the nation rather than solely one’s own interest (e.g., creating jobs, developing education, supporting the underprivileged, technological or medical innovation, artistic creativity).
• Public awareness of merits: recognition for one’s merits, standing out as a role model of civic engagement for fellow citizens, participating in France’s renown abroad (whether through military intervention, athletic feats or economic influence).

While less common, non-French citizens, like Dr. Krogan, may be decorated with the Legion of Honor if they have rendered services to France or supported causes defended by France, such as human rights, freedom of the press, or humanitarian action.

Separately, UCSF QBI and the Institut Pasteur announced a newly formed comprehensive agreement to jointly establish the Institut Pasteur-UCSF QBI Center of Excellence in Emerging Infectious Diseases with planned operations in San Francisco and Paris. The mission for the Center is multifaceted:

• Pandemic preparedness: prediction and treatment
• Collection of data from worldwide cohorts for epidemiology and prevention of infectious and neglected tropical diseases, both internationally and domestically
• Increase the capacity and research capabilities of developing nations in pandemic preparedness through an exchange program
• Deeper understanding of the effects of global warming on infectious and neglected diseases

Professor Carla Saleh, Co-scientific Lead of the partnership and Principal Investigator, Viruses and RNA Unit, Department of Virology at the Institut Pasteur said, “With global warming and an increase in infectious diseases, pandemic preparedness is more important now than ever. Our collaboration with QBI and QCRG during the COVID pandemic proved highly successful. We look forward to furthering our collaboration and bringing the unique strengths of each of our organizations to not only rapidly respond to global infectious disease challenges, but also focus our efforts on preemptively addressing matters that have potential to become pandemic.”

The agreement calls for the Institut Pasteur and UCSF to work together to train scientists, compete for sponsored research funding and attract philanthropy.

“I commend Nevan for bringing researchers at UCSF, Institut Pasteur and other scientific partners across the globe together at a crucial time in the pandemic,” said UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood, MBBS. “This highly collaborative initiative serves as an example of how team science can contribute in a global health crisis. We look forward to more collaborative work in the future.”

“The Institut Pasteur has a long history of combating global health crises, such as HIV/AIDS, Chikungunya and Zika, and the strong partnership established spontaneously with UCSF QBI in response to the COVID pandemic was exemplary in this regard,” said Professor Stewart Cole, President of the Institut Pasteur. “The long-term agreement signed today formalizes the partnership and will accelerate and intensify further collaborations.”

Dr. Krogan added, “I am deeply honored to receive the Legion of Honor Award and feel privileged for this prestigious recognition by France. This award will serve as additional inspiration to continue my work in revolutionizing how we collaborate in science to solve some of the world’s biggest medical challenges. The newly formed collaboration between UCSF QBI and the Institut Pasteur serves as a prime example of two leading scientific institutions joining efforts and resources today in anticipation of future needs for infectious disease threats.”

Background on QBI and Institut Pasteur Collaboration
In 2020 with COVID-19 spreading rapidly around the world, Krogan, UCSF’s QBI Director and Senior Investigator at Gladstone, joined forces with senior scientists at the Institut Pasteur and other researchers around the world, including at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, to try to find a treatment for a novel pathogen. The team was the first to extensively map the protein-protein interaction landscape of SARS-CoV-2 (Gordon et al., 2020) and has since published more than 50 studies.

Utilizing its groundbreaking research, QBI, the Institut Pasteur and other international collaborators were the first to mechanistically review existing drugs and compounds across the medical landscape, leading to the rapid discovery of 69 agents, which was subsequently expanded to include 97 compounds that have an impact on the identified human proteins. This breakthrough approach to identify and evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of a wide range of existing therapeutics in a new disease area enables rapid and focused selection of drugs and compounds directed at proteins critical for disease progression (White et al., 2021). Going directly to the chemistry of how drugs interact with the biological target has the potential to lead to faster treatment of patients in a pandemic – where time is paramount – with the drugs with greatest therapeutic potential, either existing or in development.

About QBI: The Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) is a University of California organized research unit reporting through the UCSF School of Pharmacy. QBI fosters collaborations across the biomedical and the physical sciences, seeking quantitative methods to address pressing problems in biology and biomedicine. Motivated by problems of human disease, QBI is committed to investigating fundamental biological mechanisms, because ultimately solutions to many diseases have been revealed by unexpected discoveries in the basic sciences. Learn more at qbi.ucsf.edu.

About UCSF: The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area. Learn more at ucsf.edu or see our Fact Sheet.

About the Institut Pasteur: The Institut Pasteur, a non-profit foundation with recognized charitable status set up by Louis Pasteur in 1887, is today an internationally renowned center for biomedical research. In the pursuit of its mission to tackle diseases in France and throughout the world, the Institut Pasteur operates in four main areas: research, public health, training, and development of research applications. The Institut Pasteur is a globally recognized leader in infectious diseases, microbiology, and immunology, with research focusing on the biology of living systems. Among its areas of investigation are emerging infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance, certain cancers, neurodegenerative diseases, and brain connectivity disorders. The Institut Pasteur’s outstanding research is facilitated by the development of a technological environment of the highest standard, with core facilities for nanoimaging, computational biology and artificial intelligence. Since its inception, 10 Institut Pasteur scientists have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine, including two in 2008 for the 1983 discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS. The Institut Pasteur is part of the Pasteur Network a worldwide network of 33 members on five continents, united by Pasteurian values, that contribute to global health. Since July 1, 2021, the Institut Pasteur is a research partner organization of Université Paris Cité. For more information: https://www.pasteur.fr/en

Authorship and funding: This work was funded by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, both part of the National Institutes of Health; the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; the Center for Research for Influenza Pathogenesis; the Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; the Centers of Excellence for Integrative Biology of Emerging Infectious Diseases of the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (France); F. Hoffmann-LaRoche AG; Vir Biotechnology, Centre for Integrative Biological Signalling Studies (CIBSS), European Research Council (ERC) and QCRG philanthropic donors. A complete list of authors and full funding information is available in the bioRxiv paper.

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