About

Els Beirnaert, PhD, brings along 18 years of experience in drug development, venture and business development. Previously she was one of the start-up pioneers of Ablynx leading multidisciplinary project teams and translating drug development projects from discovery to pre-clinical development to clinical development (phase 1 and phase 2a). She was Head of New Ventures at VIB responsible for the establishment of start-up/spin-out companies in life sciences. She served in the board of directors of Confo Therapeutics, Q-Biologicals and Multiplicom. Dr. Beirnaert obtained a Master in Biotechnology at the University of Ghent and a PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Antwerp.

Daniel Teufel, PhD, has over 17 years of experience in the field of peptide chemistry and peptide pharmaceutical development. He has earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK, using peptides to decipher the molecular interplay between the tumor suppressor p53 and its regulator p300/CBP. He has worked at Harvard Medical School in Boston, DSM in the Netherlands, and the Centre for Protein Engineering and the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. During the latter period, he worked with one of the founders of Bicycle Therapeutics, Sir Gregory Winter, on the early Bicycle Peptide project. He joined Bicycle Therapeutics shortly after its foundation in 2009, to lead the exploration and build-up of the chemistry and pharmaceutical development of Bicyclic Peptides, and subsequently Bicyclic Peptide Drug Conjugates®.

Bernard Scorneaux, PhD, has 20 years of experience in research in infectious diseases, including 15 years in the United States. Specialist in the development of anti-infective drugs, his expertise extends to the entire development process, from design, implementation, and follow-up of preclinical and early clinical studies (Phase I) to the drafting of regulatory documents. He has contributed actively to the development of several first-in-class drug candidates in Europe and the United States, including antifungals, antibiotics and antiretrovirals. Actively involved in the Malaria for Medicine Venture program, he participated in the development of Arterolane, an antimalarial drug responding to a real public health issue, placed on the African market in 2015.

Before joining Aelin Therapeutics, Dr Scorneaux managed several programs and teams within Deinobiotics, Eyevensys, Scynexis, Enanta and the Swiss Tropical Institute.

Bernard Scorneaux holds a PhD in biology, pharmacokinetics and microbiology from the Université Catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium.

Tim Van Hauwermeiren co-founded argenx in 2008 and has served as its Chief Executive Officer since April 2008. He has served as a member of its board of directors since July 2014. Mr. Van Hauwermeiren has more than 20 years of general management and business development experience across the life sciences and consumer goods sectors. Mr. Van Hauwermeiren holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in bioengineering from Ghent University (Belgium) and an Executive MBA from The Vlerick School of Management.

John de Koning, Ph.D. is a partner at LSP (Life Sciences Partners), one of Europe’s leading investors in the healthcare sector. In addition to Aelin Therapeutics, John currently serves on the boards of Merus (NASDAQ: MRUS), GTX medical and eTheRNA. He also served on the boards of several other companies, such as argenx (NASDAQ: ARGX), BMEYE (acquired by Edwards Lifesciences) and Prosensa (acquired by BioMarin). Prior to joining LSP in 2006, John was the Managing Director of Semaia Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Hybrigenics). Previously, he was a senior researcher within several prestigious medical research labs and worked with, among others, Prof. Hans Clevers, Prof. Bob Löwenberg and Prof. Allan Balmain. John has a Master’s degree in Medical Biology from the University of Utrecht and a Ph.D. in Oncology from the Erasmus University Rotterdam, both in the Netherlands. After obtaining his Ph.D., he received a prestigious fellowship from the Dutch Cancer Society to work at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center in San Francisco. His results were published in numerous leading scientific journals, including Nature Genetics.

studied Biology with focus on Genetics and Biochemistry in Münster and Mainz. He joined Boehringer Ingelheim in 1996 in the area of Alzheimer´s disease research. After his post doc time Marcus moved to Boehringer Ingelheim in Biberach to join the Parkinson disease research group as molecular biology lab head. Several peer reviewed publications together with academic partners emphasize his focus on academic collaborations. In 2006 Marcus joined the department R&D Projectmanagement where he was responsible for leading project teams from preclinical development until clinical phase II studies in the area of oncology, urology, metabolism and CNS diseases. During a three years period he brought several projects from a preclinical development state until end of clinical phase I. From 2009 to 2011 he moved back to Ingelheim and joined the newly founded collaborative research department where he was responsible for international research collaborations of Boehringer Ingelheim with external partners. In the mid of 2011 he moved in the department of Research Networking where he was responsible for external resourcing and external innovation in the area of cardiometabolic, CNS and respiratory research. Since 2014 he works in the Boehringer Ingelheim corporate Venture Fund in Ingelheim as partner.

Chris De Jonghe is since 2013 group leader risk capital at PMV, where she is specifically in charge of the investments in the Life Sciences and Healthcare sector. Chris has built her experience with starting and existing biotech companies at the Flemish Institute of Biotechnology (VIB), where she was active for 11 years as respectively the licensing and business development manager. Chris has a PhD in biochemical sciences and a bachelor’s degree in law. She is a member of the Board of Directors of many of PMV’s portfolio companies and funds active in the biotech sector.

Dr. Beat Steffen is a Principal in Basel, Switzerland. Prior to joining Novartis Venture Fund, he worked at Novartis Pharmaceuticals in commercial roles in the US and in Switzerland launching several products mainly in the cardiovascular area. Beat joined Novartis from Wellington Partners Venture Capital where he worked with biotech and medical device startup companies. Prior to that, he was at McKinsey & Company in Zurich working with clients in the pharmaceutical industry. Beat is a Swiss-trained physician having focused in cardiovascular surgery and intensive care. He graduated from the University of Zurich Medical School and qualified as a Medical Doctor in Basel. Beat holds an MBA with distinction from INSEAD. Beat serves on the boards of Aelin Therapeutics, and the University of Zurich Life Sciences Fund.

Jan Van den Bossche holds a Master Degree in Applied Economic Sciences at the KULeuven. He worked for more than 12 years as a biotech analyst at Petercam. He was involved in numerous public and private transactions of Belgian and Dutch Biotech companies, such as ThromoboGenics, Tigenix, UCB, AMT (Uniqure), IBA, MDxHealth . Before he joined Fund+, he was for more than 2 years part of the investor relations team at the Dutch life sciences and materials sciences company DSM (Geleen, NL). He represents Fund+ on the Board of Octimet Oncology, Immunic and Aelin Therapeutics.

Griet Vanpoucke, PhD, is Head New Ventures at VIB. With her team she translates exciting science from the research institute into successful novel ventures. She currently also serves as non-exec Director on the Board of Orionis Biosciences. Previously she was part of Pronota, a biomarker discovery and diagnostics start-up company. As Director R&D she was responsible for several internal and partnered biomarker discovery programs. She played a leading role in the companies transformation from a proteomics discovery company to a diagnostic product company, up and till the company was acquired in 2014. She holds a PhD in Biotechnology from Ghent University and did a postdoc at the MRC in Edinburgh, UK.

Frederic Rousseau and Joost Schymkowitz are a scientific duo since 1998. They both obtained their PhD in 2001 from the University of Cambridge (UK) where they used protein engineering methods to study mechanisms of protein folding. They then moved to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg (Germany) where they contributed to the development of several structural bioinformatics tools to predict mutational effect on protein stability and aggregation (FoldX and TANGO).

They are currently group leaders at the KU Leuven-VIB Centre for Brain & Disease Research where they conduct research on mechanisms of protein misfolding and aggregation in disease. They developed several technology platforms manipulating protein aggregation either to inhibit protein aggregation or to design synthetic amyloid peptides with biological activity.

Frederic Rousseau and Joost Schymkowitz are a scientific duo since 1998. They both obtained their PhD in 2001 from the University of Cambridge (UK) where they used protein engineering methods to study mechanisms of protein folding. They then moved to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg (Germany) where they contributed to the development of several structural bioinformatics tools to predict mutational effect on protein stability and aggregation (FoldX and TANGO).

They are currently group leaders at the KU Leuven-VIB Centre for Brain & Disease Research where they conduct research on mechanisms of protein misfolding and aggregation in disease. They developed several technology platforms manipulating protein aggregation either to inhibit protein aggregation or to design synthetic amyloid peptides with biological activity.