Position in DATURA: Leader Datura WP 1, Project Co-ordinator
Job title: Professor, chef du service de pneumologie
Home Institution: Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Nantes, France
ResearchGate link
E-mail: xavier.blanc@chu-nantes.fr
Professor François-Xavier Blanc is a medical doctor, clinician trained in respiratory medicine, currently working in the Respiratory Medicine Department of the Nantes University Hospital (Head of this Department) and at Nantes University, medical school. His main scientific interests focus on tuberculosis, especially in people living with HIV/AIDS. In 2008, he created and still chairs the tuberculosis-HIV working group at ANRS, the French National Agency for Research on AIDS and RIA – 2018 – Co-infections and co-morbidities. He has a broad experience in tuberculosis clinical care and research. He already coordinated two large international, multicenter, randomised controlled trials in HIV-infected adults with tuberculosis overseas, namely the CAMELIA trial in Cambodia and the STATIS trial in Cambodia, Ivory Coast, Uganda and Vietnam.
Prof. Blanc is a member of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) and serves as the National Delegate for ERS since 2012. He is also a member of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases (IUATLD, The Union), the French SPLF (national scientific Respiratory Medicine Society) and the International AIDS Society (IAS). He is the Chair of the national subgroup of SPLF working on tuberculosis and non tuberculous mycobacteria (GREPI, for Groupe de Recherche et d’Enseignement en Pneumo-Infectiologie) and a member of the Global Tuberculosis Network (GTN) and the TBNet. Recently, Prof. Blanc has been nominated to be the co-Chair of the French tuberculosis coordinated action (Action Coordonnée) of I3M-ITMO-ANRS to stimulate and link clinicians and researchers working on tuberculosis. His current clinical research activities focus on the management of tuberculosis/HIV patients, with a global objective of targeting the high mortality that still affects the most severely immunocompromised individuals. The DATURA project is in line with 2 previous trials, CAMELIA and STATIS, both co-funded by ANRS.