Flavio Salazar Onfray

FLAVIO SALAZAR ONFRAY Bachelor of Science (Biology) (Uppsala University, Sweden 1992) Ph.D. (Karolinska Institute, Sweden 1998) (Date of birth: October 7, 1965). Present position: Full Professor (2011), Faculty of Medicine, former Vice President of Research and Development (2014-2022), University of Chile. Former Minister of Science Technology Knowledge and Innovation(2022). SHORT BIOGRAPHY: Dr. Flavio Salazar Onfray obtained his Ph.D. at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden in 1998. He returned to Chile in 1999 after he got a position at the Disciplinary Program of Immunology of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences and successfully established a productive research group. Dr. Salazar's major interest has been focused on several aspects of tumor immunology, from basic research to clinical trials. Dr. Salazar described the effect of cytokine IL-10 on tumor antigen presentation inhibition. How tumors could use its expression to evade the immune system (published in J. Exp. med. 1994 and J.Immunol. 1997-1998). Using a short peptide homologous to IL-10 functional domain, he showed that IL-10 peptide could affect antigen presentation in tumors and the maturation of DCs (J.Immunol. 2004, Immunobiology 2011). He also identified and characterized new melanoma antigens derived from the Melanocortin 1 receptor, which he demonstrated to be over-expressed in melanoma British J Immunol. (2005), useful for diagnosing ocular melanoma (IOVPS, 2007). During the last fifteen years, Dr. Salazar has organized and led a multidisciplinary group of scientists that includes physicians, specialists in oncology and immunology, together with biologists and biochemists, which built a clean facility for manipulation of human cells and performed the first Phase I and Phase I/II clinical trial in Chile for cancer immunotherapy. The results of these clinical studies were published in recognized international journals such as Clin. Exp. Immunol. (2005); J. Clin. Oncol. (2009); Clin. Cancer Res (2011), Cancer Immunol. Immunother. (2012); Brit J Cancer (2013); BMC Cancer (2018); Oncotarget (2018); and J Immunother Cancer (2020). He and his group invented an original method to produce dendritic cells ex vivo protected by an international patent (PCT/EP2008/062909) and proposed a new melanoma vaccine based on tumor lysates (PCT2019/US62/814756). He also described the gap junction (GJ) interactions between human immune cells and tumors J. Immunol. (2007), J. Immunol. (2011), J. Immunol. (2015), Brit J Cancer (2015); Front. Immunol. (2017) and Int J Mol Sci. (2020). Dr. Salazar has been an advisor to several undergraduate students and is highly committed to training young immunologists. He has contributed directly to the formation of 14 PhDs and several MSc. He advised four post-graduate students at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences (ICBM). Since 2011, Dr. Salazar (Sub director) and Dr. Kalergis (Director) have led the recently renewed Institute Millennium of Immunology and Immunotherapy, a FOCIS-recognized Center of Excellence, where new scientifical leaders have been formed. He has acted as a referee for journals such as Cancer Res., J. Immunol, Immunobiology, Frontiers in Immunology, and several Latin-American basic and clinical journals. He has also been a member of study groups of CONICYT, the Chilean equivalent to NIH. Dr. Salazar has been invited as a speaker to several international and national conferences, including FOCIS, Australian Cancer Society, European Cancer Society and American Association for Cancer Research, and CITIM, and he has become an international authority recognized by basic and clinical scientists and physicians, in tumor immunotherapy. Dr. Salazar was trained in several prestigious research centers such as Karolinska Institute and NIH and has a net of collaborators in Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, Denmark, France, the United States, Australia, and China. He has participated in several scientific societies, and he was President of the Chilean Society of Immunology and President of the Latin American Association of Immunology Societies (ALAI). He was President of the technological cluster KnowHub Chile board, a member of the International Human Phenome Consortium (IHPC) board, and a Cape Horn International Center (CHIC) board member. During the last twenty years, He obtained several research grants from national and international agencies (Cancerfonden Sweden; University of Chile; FONDECYT Chile, Fondef Chile, FIC, CORFO, and Millennium) and he has become the leader of several R&D projects funding two spinoff companies, Oncobiomed in 2002, dedicated to cellular immunotherapy technology transfer and Bionex in 2007, dedicated to advice basic scientist in the design and writing of R&D applications. During 2007 and 2008, the Forum for Innovation from the Ministry of Economy and the private sector nominated him as a finalist for the innovation AVONNI price. In 2009 he was part of the Chilean President's delegation