Dr. A. Epstein is the general coordinator of HEVAR. He is the chairman of the Steering Committee and the official contact point for the European Commission. To ensure an efficient project management of the project, he will be supported in this task by EZUS LYON 1 / LYON 1 INGENIERIE.
He is also the leader of the workpackage dedicated to the Training and transfer of technology.

Dr. Epstein belongs to the European Society for Gene Therapy (ESGT) and is member of the Governing board of the Francophone Society for Cellular and Gene Therapy (SFTCG). He is member of the Editorial board of the journal Current Gene Therapy and, as such, was the editor of a special issue of this journal (June 2006) entirely devoted to the biological properties and applications of HSV-1-based amplicon vectors.
He published more than 70 papers, including several review articles and book chapters, mostly on the biology of HSV-1 and its derived vectors, he gave more than 20 lectures as invited speaker, and contributed more than 120 communications to scientific meetings. He is evaluator of several scientific journals (including Journal of Virology, Journal of General Virology, EMBO reports, Gene Therapy, Molecular Therapy, Human Gene Therapy, Current Gene Therapy) and also is an expert evaluator of several French (AFM, INSERM, OSEO-ANVAR, VLM) and foreign public scientific societies (principally from Argentine and other South American countries). He was formerly a member of the scientific committee N°1 of INSERM and was consultant of private companies on aspects related to HSV-1, gene transfer and gene therapy.
He is currently co-owner and member of the governing committee of BioViron, a French biotechnological SME devoted to the development and application of HSV-1-based vectors.