Sylvain has more than 20 years of experience as an executive director, entrepreneur, and advisor in the biotech/pharma sector. After two successive industry-funded postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Orléans (FRA) and the University of Oxford (UK), Sylvain began his career in 2002 as a Principal Scientist at UCB Pharma (Belgium) where he led the Histamine H3 project for the treatment of cognitive disorders, with the ultimate delivery of Phase 1 clinical candidate UCB2892. In 2007, he joined Addex Therapeutics (CH) where he served as Laboratory Head, Group leader, and then Associate Research Director in Medicinal Chemistry within the CNS Department.
In 2015, he co-founded Pragma Therapeutics (France), a biotech company focusing on the development of novel therapeutics for the treatment of neuropsychiatric and otic disorders, winner of the UK OBN Bioseed™ "One-to-Watch" award in 2018. He is co-inventor of 24 patent applications, co-author of 4 book chapters, 3 review articles, and 15 full peer-review articles. Sylvain holds a PhD in Organic and Heterocyclic Chemistry from the University of Rouen (France).