Dr. Maria Loustau holds a PhD in Biotechnology, with expertise in Biochemistry, Biotechnology and Immunology. She joined the leading HLA-G research team in Paris (2010) to work on HLA-G expression patterns and HLA-G recombinant expression and purification. She joined Invectys in 2011 and since she has been leading projects related to the human health Immunotherapies’ field development, notably on HLA-G immunotherapies research by first developing new methods to induce anti-HLA-G antibodies (2012). Later, she made several new achievements by isolating the first-in-class blocking antibodies and nanobodies against the HLA-G/ILT4 immune checkpoint pair (2016, 2019), developing the first immunotherapy targeting HLA-G through the generation of anti-HLA-G CAR-T cells (2018), and contributing to iNKT cells therapeutic adjuvant project (2021). She is co-inventor of 6 patents related to HLA-G and immunotherapeutic products. Currently, she is involved in translational partnerships management with laboratories of hospitals, academia and industry.

  • CAR-T project was awarded by the industry as an innovative therapeutic strategy for Cancer treatment (Matwin 2019) and was granted a $14.2 million CPRIT funding by the State of Texas to initiate Phase 1/2a clinical trial in 2022 against advanced carcinoma.
  • Blocking recombinant nanobodies against ILT4 to reprogram the tumor microenvironment (TME) Pre-IND filed.
  • 2020 CPRIT, Grant for anti-HLA-G CAR-T cells phase I initiation
  • 2019 Matwin, best Biotech Project (anti-HLA-G CAR-T cells)
  • 2019 Merit Award at ESMO Immuno Oncology, Geneva 2019 (anti-HLA-G CAR-T cells)