Advisors
Clinical Advisory Board
Jessica Mann (chair CAB), .
Jessica Mann, MD, PhD has long-standing experience in drug development; she was previously Medical Director and a member of the management team that spearheaded the successful IPO of Speedel AG in 2005 (sold to Novartis for USD 880 million in 2008) and prior to that worked at Roche, where she was a Senior Clinical and Licensing Liaison, and Novartis, where she was International Clinical Leader for DiovanTM (Novartis’ top selling drug). Before joining Novartis Jessica worked as a cardiologist and cardiovascular pathologist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD (USA). She then held a lecturer position in Cardiovascular Pathology at St Georges Hospital Medical School in London. Jessica has an MD from the University of Buenos Aires and a PhD from the University of London.
Kjell S. Sakariassen, CEO of KellSa s.a.s., Biella.
Founder and CEO of KellSa s.a.s. which provides medical advice and training to biotech and pharmaceutical companies and NIH supported research groups in USA within the therapeutic areas of haemostasis / thrombosis, metabolism and inflammation. Previously Worldwide Head of Pharmacology and Early Safety Evaluation at Serono, Director and Head of Pharmacology at Pharmacia, Director and Head of Discovery Research at Nycomed, Professor of Physiology at University of Oslo and Research Scientist at Roche, Basel. Post-doctoral studies from University Hospital of Seattle, WA, and Roche, Basel. He has in particular extensive expertise in profiling Linotroban, Clopidogrel and Aspirin as well as other anti-platelet agents and anti-coagulants. He has published numerous scientific articles and is a member on scientific advisory editorial boards. Ph.D. in medical biology from University Hospital of Utrecht and Fellow of the American Heart Association since 2001.
Michael S. Marriott, Advisor to the Biotechnolgy and Venture Capital Industries worldwide and member of the Wellcome Trust's referee panel.
Extensive pharmaceutical industry experience in the anti-infectives field. His early career was at Pfizer where he held increasingly senior positions, including leading the microbiology team. He was responsible for the biological evaluation of new antifungal drugs that led to the discovery of fluconazole (Diflucan), the world's most successful antifungal. Prior to his activities as a consultant and SAB member of UK-based anti-infective companies, Michael served over 13 years at GlaxoSmithKline where he was also Director for Anti-Infectives.
Camilo Colaço, Chief Scientific Officer & Founder of Immbio Limited.
Camilo is the founding scientist of ImmBio and is responsible for the scientific programmes and generation of IP. He was the first person to identify the dendritic cell as the key integrator of the innate and acquired immune responses and pioneered DC-targeted vaccine approaches. Before the founding of ImmBio he was Director of IP of Quadrant Healthcare plc., responsible for the development of QH's IP portfolio that formed the basis of its successful IPO on the London Stock Exchange and in 2000 the acquisition by Elan Inc for $75million. Previously Lecturer, Clinical School, University of Cambridge; Royal Society Fellow, EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany; ICRF Fellow, ICRF Laboratories, London.
Scientific Advisory Board
Karsten Kristiansen, Head of Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen.
Karsten Kristiansen is Professor of Molecular Biology and Head of the Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen. He was previously Professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Southern Denmark, where he was head of department from 1992 to 2005. He was a co-founder of BioLigands ApS and served as CEO from 2002-2007. After graduation from the University of Copenhagen, he held postdoctoral positions at the Max-Planck-Institut für Molekulare Genetik in Berlin and at the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique, Fondation Edmond de Rothschild, in Paris. He is member of the Danish Academy of Natural Sciences and visiting professor at the Beijing Genomics Institute. His research focuses on regulation of gene expression and cellular differentiation with particular emphasis on lipid signalling and the effects of natural compounds.
Morten Kielland-Brandt, Professor & Director of Center for Microbial Biotechnology, Department of Systems Biology, Technical University of Denmark.
Expert in industrial yeast, yeast genetics and metabolic engineering. Morten Kielland-Brandt headed the Yeast Genetics Department of the Carlsberg Laboratories for many years and authored or co-authored more than 60 scientific papers on yeast physiology, genetics and metabolism. He now heads “Center for Microbial Biotechnology”, a multidisciplinary center for yeast and fungal metabolic engineering at the Technical University of Denmark.
Karl-Heinz Altmann, ETH Zürich.
Prof. Karl-Heinz Altmann studied chemistry at the University of Mainz, Germany, and he holds a Ph. D. in organic chemistry from the University of Basel, Switzerland. Since 2003 he is Full Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland. Before 2003, he had spent 13 years in drug discovery research at Novartis Pharma, where he was the Senior Scientific Expert for Chemistry (2000- 2002) and the acting Global Head of Discovery Chemistry (2003). Prof. Altmann’s research interests are at the interface between chemistry and biology, with a particular focus on the chemical synthesis of biologically active natural products and their synthetic and semi-synthetic analogs.
Jay Keasling, co-founder of a number of startups in this space, including Amyris (NASDAQ: AMRS), one of the most recognised names in commercial synthetic biology.
He is a professor in the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and the Department of Bioengineering, Senior Faculty Scientist and Associate Laboratory Director for Biosciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Chief Executive Officer of the Joint BioEnergy Institute. The Keasling group is perhaps best known for its contributions to the development of a synthetic biology technique for producing the anti-malaria treatment artemisinin in yeast — at a fraction of the cost of plantation-derived artemisinin.
Douglas Cameron, founder and managing director of the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based consultancy Alberti Advisors.
Douglas is the former head of biotechnology at Cargill where he built and led Cargill’s corporate biotechnology research group. He was the Managing Director-Chief Scientific Advisor at Piper Jaffray and Chief Scientific Officer at Khosla Ventures. Prior to his industry roles, he was a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madisonwere he taught biochemical engineering and established a leading research laboratory in the areas of metabolic engineering and bioprocess technology.
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