Governance

Paola Marcella Camargo Minoprio holds a B.A. in Biomedicine (1978) with specialization in Immunoparasitology at the Pasteur Institute de Lille (1979), a master’s degree in Parasitology (University of São Paulo, Brazil, 1985) and a PhD in Immunology (Paris 6, Sorbonne Université, France, 1989). She completed her postdoctoral studies at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, and at the DNAX Research Center for Molecular and Cellular Immunology, Palo Alto, United States. She studied Business Management and Project Management (Institut pour le Développement Économique et Technique, Paris, 2008) and holds an M.A. in Innovation & Strategies in Intellectual Property (University of Strasbourg, France, 2010). She is the head of the Trypanosomatid Infectious Processes laboratory in the Department of Global Health, at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where she has worked since 1984. She is a representative of the Pasteur Institute in São Paulo’s office and the director of the Institut Pasteur de São Paulo (IPSP).

She coordinated a postgraduate course at the University of Paris 6 for 12 years and lectured at the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris. From 2000 to 2005, she established and implemented the AMSUD Pasteur network, a scientific and academic cooperation between the Pasteur Institute and 55 institutions from five Mercosur countries. She served as general coordinator of the Americas Region of the Pasteur Network. She coordinated Fiocruz affiliation to the Pasteur Network. She negotiated and implemented several bilateral cooperation agreements, such as Fiocruz/Pasteur, Fapeso/Pasteur and USP/Pasteur, in addition to implementing more than 20 regional courses in Mercosur and several projects in partnership with the AMSUD/Pasteur network. She also organized biobusiness events in Brazil, Uruguay and Chile. In 2015, she implemented the tripartite agreement between Pasteur, Fiocruz and USP, aiming to develop joint initiatives between the partners, such as the Pasteur-USP Scientific Platform, created in 2019 – an intermediate stage towards the creation of the IPSP.

She is the author of numerous scientific publications and holds a significant portfolio of patents in the USA, Europe, Brazil, China, and India. She supervised several master and doctoral theses and organized several courses and symposiums. A scientific expert for several national and international agencies and scientific journals, she was a member of the Steering Committee Pathogenesis & Applied Genomics of WHO (2004-2007). Her research, focusing mainly on parasite immune evasion and persistence strategies in the host, seek the development of therapeutic and/or diagnostic molecules using parasitic mitogens as targets. She uses a multidisciplinary strategy that includes immunology, cellular and molecular biology and 2D-3D imaging.

She is French-Brazilian, French foreign trade advisor and holder of the Légion d’honneur (2020), the MEAE Epidemics Medal (2021) and the French Senate Medal (2023).