Jean-François Rossignol

Who is Jean-François Rossignol?

Jean-François Rossignol is an American scientist, a medicinal chemist and a physician, born in France on September 5, 1943. He was educated at the University of Paris, later specializing in tropical medicine. He then pursed a career in academia and in the pharmaceutical industry discovering and developing new drugs for the treatment of parasitic diseases such as halofantrine in the treatment of multidrug resistant Falciparum malaria or albendazole and nitazoxanide for the treatment of intestinal protozoan and helminthic infections. In 1993, he co-created his own pharmaceutical company, Romark Laboratories, L.C., to develop his own invention nitazoxanide, the first of the thiazolides. At Romark, he is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the company and its Chief Science Officer. Following the discovery of the antiviral activity of the thiazolides Rossignol went to Stanford University in California to study interferon stimulated gene pathways and chronic viral hepatitis under Prof. Emmet Keeffe and Prof. Jeffery Glenn. It was in the Glenn laboratory that the mechanism of antiviral activity of nitazoxanide against the hepatitis C virus was discovered.