26th Annual Biotech in Europe Forum

Jonathan C. Javitt, M.D., M.P.H.

Founder, Chairman & Chief Scientist; Co-CEO HOPE Therapeutics:

Dr. Javitt has been a founder of seven successful healthcare IT and biopharma startups with public exits. He has additionally led drug-development engagements for Merck, Allergan, Pharmacia, Novartis, and Pfizer. He was appointed to healthcare leadership roles under Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush. In the latter role he was commissioned by President Bush to Chair the Health Committee of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) and to lead the development of Executive Order 13335, establishing the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. In the aftermath of 9/11, Dr. Javitt was appointed a Senior Fellow in the National Security Health Policy Center of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies to focus on biosecurity preparedness and appointed by President Bush to the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense. He is a graduate of Princeton University, Cornell University Medical College, Harvard School of Public Health, the Wills Eye Hospital, and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The Harvard Chan School awarded him the Alumnus of Merit award in 2016, and he continues to serve as Adjunct Professor of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. Javitt has published more than 200 scientific works in the areas of health outcomes and Pharmacoeconomics that have been cited by more than 29,000 scientists. In his role as Chief Scientist of NRx Pharmaceuticals he continues to lead NRx on Scientific matters to advance and expand our pipeline of lifesaving medicines.

Mr. Margolis joined Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. in 2017 and serves as senior managing director and head of life sciences investment banking. Michael also serves as co-head of healthcare investment banking. He has over two decades of investment banking experience in the life sciences sectors.

Prior to joining Oppenheimer, he served as the head of healthcare investment banking at Roth Capital Partners, LLC and as a managing director at Merriman Holdings, Inc. (also known as Merriman Curhan Mr. Margolis joined Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. in 2017 and serves as senior managing director and head of life sciences investment banking. Michael also serves as co-head of healthcare investment banking. He has over two decades of investment banking experience in the life sciences sectors.

Michael holds an MBA from NYU and a PharmD from Rutgers.

Dr. Gebauer has more than 30 years of industry experience in research and development and has been part of teams responsible for numerous approvals worldwide in several therapeutic areas, including Alzheimer’s disease. He served as CEO of Secarna Pharmaceuticals; CEO and Chairman at Omeicos Ophthalmics Inc, Cambridge, MA, USA; and as CDO and Managing Director of the Berlin, Germany-based sister company, Omeicos Therapeutics. He has held C-level positions at leading global pharmaceutical firms, including Sun Pharmaceuticals and Merz Pharmaceuticals. During his time at Merz, he served as Senior Vice President, Head of Global Research & Development, and was directly involved in the development of memantine, which was approved for the treatment of Alzheimer’s. Dr. Gebauer studied medicine at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany, where he also earned a PhD in experimental pharmacology. He additionally holds a degree in computer science and has lectured on pharmaco-economics.

Allan Marchington is the Head of Life Sciences at Intermediate Capital Group PLC (ICG), a FTSE 100 asset manager with over $110Bn under management. The ICG life sciences team is focused on investing in novel therapeutics at the clinical stage and will lead deals in Europe and the US.

Prior to joining ICG, Allan was formerly a Founding Partner at Bridge Valley Ventures and prior to this a Founder of Apposite Capital. Allan has had a number of operational roles during his career and was Senior Vice President at Millennium Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, Mass. Allan joined Millennium following their acquisition of the company he founded, Cambridge Discovery Chemistry, where he was CEO. Allan began his career as researcher at Pfizer where he was involved in the discovery and the advancement of a number of molecules into the clinic.

Anastasiya Sybirna, PhD, is a Principal at Jeito, based in London, UK. Before joining Jeito in 2026, Ana was a Senior Associate at Fidelity-backed F-Prime Capital, where she focused on healthcare investments and served as a Board Observer on multiple therapeutics companies across different therapeutic areas and modalities. Prior to F-Prime, Ana was an Engagement Manager at McKinsey, specializing in Pharmaceuticals & Medical Products, and previously worked as a Strategy Consultant at Advancy. Anastasiya holds a PhD in Stem Cell Biology and Medicine from the University of Cambridge, an MSc in Molecular and Cell Biology from École normale supérieure in Paris, and a BSc in Biology from Ivan Franko National University of Lviv in Ukraine.

Anu Balendran is Head of Business Development & Licensing (BD&L) Transactions for the Cardiovascular, Renal and Metabolic (CRM) disease area at Novartis, where he leads strategic business development transactions from evaluation through deal execution.

Prior to joining Novartis, Anu spent several years at Novo Nordisk as a Senior Director in the Business Development Transactions team. There, he led a broad range of strategic partnerships and transactions, including notable deals with Heartseed, Prothena, Dewpoint, Microsoft, Forma Therapeutics, En2, and Almirall.

Before Novo Nordisk, Anu served as Vice President of Business Development at Alligator Bioscience, a Swedish biotechnology company specializing in antibody-based therapeutics for oncology. In this role, he led the company's partnering and out-licensing activities.

Earlier in his career, Anu held a variety of business development roles at AstraZeneca between 2010 and 2018, spanning Search & Evaluation, Alliance Management, and Transactions. His primary focus was on cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, with additional experience in respiratory and inflammation portfolios. Prior to transitioning into business development, he worked as a scientist at AstraZeneca from 2001 to 2010, contributing to research programs in diabetes and obesity.

Anu holds a PhD in Biochemistry and continues to bring a strong scientific perspective to his business development work, combining deep technical understanding with extensive transaction and partnering experience.

Audrey joined Forbion in 2021 and is now a Principal contributing to building and managing the portfolio across therapeutic areas and modalities.

In that capacity, she currently serves as board director on Azafaros and observer on CellCentric, Synox, Anaveon, Granite, and formerly Aiolos (Acquired by GSK).

At Panakes since 2016, Barbara brings a specific expertise in cardiovascular sector as well as a broad knowledge of the medical device sector, acquired as former Director of Clinical Affairs, Certifications, Registrations and Quality Assurance at CID SpA (now Alvimedica) and as former Director of Business Development & Global Marketing Director for the Heart Valves Business Unit at Sorin (now Livanova). She was also founder and CEO of Techwald SPA, an operational Holding Company supporting and investing in early stage Med Tech Companies.

Education MSC - 110/110 cum laude University of Perugia (Medicinal Chemistry) Executive MBA cum laude – SDA Bocconi (Milan)

Short Bio — Birgit Steckel-Hamann, PhD, MSc Associate Vice President, External Innovation, Search & Evaluation, Cardiometabolic Health, Eli Lilly and Company Accomplished external innovation leader with more than 30 years of experience in large pharma, combining deep scientific expertise with strategic R&D and business development leadership.

Dr. Birgit Steckel-Hamann is Associate Vice President, External Innovation, Search & Evaluation, Cardiometabolic Health at Eli Lilly. She holds a PhD in Medicine from the University of Marburg, Germany, and has more than 30 years of experience spanning discovery research, clinical development, public-private partnerships, and external innovation. Trained in pharmacology, she began her career in diabetes research at the Lilly Diabetes Research Centre in Hamburg and went on to lead high-throughput screening laboratories as well as Phase 1 and large Phase 3 diabetes registration trials across Europe.

Since moving into External Innovation in 2008, Birgit has held leadership roles focused on identifying, evaluating, and enabling strategic collaborations and transactions across cardiometabolic indications. She served as industry co-leader of IMI-SUMMIT, led company-wide external collaborations as Head of EU Public Private Partnerships at Lilly, and later became Senior Director for Search & Evaluation in Cardiometabolic Health.

In 2025, she was promoted to Associate Vice President and currently serves as global lead for Search & Evaluation in Cardiovascular and Women’s Health. Throughout her career, Dr. Steckel-Hamann has played a key role in shaping strategic assessments, licensing opportunities, and acquisitions across multiple modalities and therapeutic indications, with a focus on advancing innovation in areas of substantial unmet medical need.

Chandra P. Leo is a member of the private equity team at HBM Partners, a Swiss-based healthcare investment firm with more than $2 billion in assets under management. He has been responsible for investments in more than 25 private biotech, medical device and diagnostics companies in the US and Europe. These companies have so far generated eleven NASDAQ IPOs, eight M&A transactions, and six FDA-approved marketed products.

Before becoming a VC, Chandra served as a physician at the University Hospital Leipzig, Germany, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. Chandra holds degrees as a Doctor of Medicine from the Freie Universität Berlin (Charité), a Master in Medicines Development (MAS) from the University of Basel, and an MBA with distinction from INSEAD (France/Singapore).

Corinne Venot Biologist by training, PhD and MBA. She has always been focused on the Oncology field, taking various positions from marketing, early drug discovery, R&D partnering to Business Development & Licensing. Within Sanofi Oncology Division, as director of oncology business opportunities, she was specialized in preclinical/discovery assets with an emphasis on antibody drug conjugates. She joined Servier in 2016, to lead the oncology portfolio licensing activities.

Actually, at BeOne since 2019, as VP Business Development, involved as transaction lead for in- and out-licensing projects aiming at overall BeOne growth.

Daniel Rankin is Senior Vice President, Head of Strategy & Corporate Development at Sobi, where he sits on the Executive Committee and leads M&A, business development, global market access, and portfolio strategy. He joined the company in 2017 as Chief of Staff to the CEO and quickly took on broader responsibilities, stepping into the corporate development leadership role the following year. Since then, he’s helped guide Sobi’s evolution from a small regional player into a global rare disease company, now generating over $2.5B in annual revenue.

Daniel has led more than $5B in transactions at Sobi, including the acquisitions of Novimmune, CTI BioPharma, and Dova Pharmaceuticals, as well as U.S. rights to Synagis from AstraZeneca (and royalties tied to Beyfortus). He’s also been responsible for key strategic partnerships with Apellis, Ionis, and ADC Therapeutics.

He began his career in academia as a Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione Group Leader at the University of Zürich, where his lab focused on bacterial and plasmid evolution. He authored 40 peer-reviewed papers—cited over 4,000 times—before moving into consulting with McKinsey & Company in New York and Zürich, where he worked with global pharma and biotech clients on M&A and corporate strategy.

Daniel holds a PhD from the University of Helsinki, an MSc from Leiden University, and a BSc from the University of York.

Daniel Marshall hold a PhD in immunology from University College London and brings experience in business development and venture capital within the life sciences sector. Most recently, he serves as a senior director in the global oncology S&E team at AstraZeneca and prior to this was a Director in the Oncology Search and Evaluation team at MSD. Daniel also worked in the investment team at Epidarex Capital, focusing on early-stage therapeutics investments. He has also held roles in the investment team at IP Group and in the business development team at LifeArc.

Darren is Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Elpiscience. Prior to co-founding Elpiscience, Darren served as Venture Partner of Lilly Asia Ventures (LAV). Before joining LAV, Darren served as the Global Head and Vice President for Asia and Emerging Markets of Roche Partnering, Roche’s deal-making body that manages the company’s business development. While at Roche, Darren was responsible for driving the strategy and execution of partnering activities in the territory of Asia and Emerging Markets encompassing over 100 countries. During his tenure, Darren also championed and oversaw the closing of many key transactions between Roche and partners worldwide. He managed a global team and established a strong business network in key countries like China, Japan, Korea, Australia/New Zealand, Russia, and Brazil.

An accomplished entrepreneur himself, Darren spent a long career at the Procter & Gamble Company with increasing responsibilities in drug R&D and business development. He co-founded and managed as CEO of PharmaLegacy Laboratories in Shanghai in 2008, which became a premium CRO providing high-quality drug discovery services to a global clientele. Darren has been a highly respected leader in global life sciences and a sought-after speaker in various business forums. He was also an avid community builder exemplified by one of the longest tenures as a board member of the BayHelix Group.

Darren received his medical training at China Medical University, a Ph.D. from the University of Sheffield in the UK, and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Serial biotech entrepreneur combining strong strategic, technological, and managerial experience with a proven track record in deal-making and fundraising.Throughout my career, I have led teams that successfully advanced four drug candidates from research to the clinic (up to Phase IIb). To date, I have raised over €170 million from venture capital firms and strategic partners across Europe, the USA, Japan, and Korea, and contributed to several successful M&A transactions and IPOs in the biotechnology sector. I am currently Managing Director of CarKath srl, a strategic consulting firm, and serve on the boards of Essenscia (Bio.be) and as Chairman of the Board of the French Biotech company ErVimmune, the US medical devices company Ergosuture and the Belgian public biotech Biosenic. Previously, I was Chairman of Cell Matters (acquired by Cryoport) and Board Member of Vivalis/Valneva, Bioxodes, the Wallonia Health Cluster (BIOWIN), and the European Biotech Enterprises association (EBE). I served as CEO of PDC*line Pharma for nearly 10 years and CEO of Promethera Biosciences/Cellaïon for 6 years, and am co-inventor of the first GMP-approved mobile manufacturing unit for cell therapy (WO 2014049151 A). Earlier in my career, I spent 12 years as a Principal at Arthur D. Little, leading international projects in strategy, M&A, and innovation management for major pharma and biotech companies.As an entrepreneur, I co-founded four biotechnology ventures:- Myosix – tissue engineering company acquired by Genzyme (muscle cell regeneration for cardiac repair).- Murigenetics – biotech developing therapies for genetic disorders.- Digital Orthopaedics – digital health company providing AI-driven clinical decision support for musculoskeletal pathologies (selected by Dassault Systèmes’ 3DExperience Lab).- HairClone – biotechnology company developing cell-based hair regeneration treatments and follicle banking services.Earlier in my career, I worked at IsoHealthcare Group (later acquired by Monitor Group) as a Senior Consultant in healthcare strategy, as Strategic Marketing Manager for the Centre Européen de Bioprospective, and as Project Leader in corporate R&D at Zeneca (UK).

Eric has a varied background encompassing science, licensing and venture investment.

Before his current position at IOB, he was for 11 years a Partner at two Venture Capital funds, Cathay Health (investing in Healthtech) and before that Seventure Partners (investing in microbiome science). Earlier, he was a CEO for Delenext Therapeutics in Schlieren, the global head of external research and technology for Roche Pharma, and a business development executive for SGX Pharmaeuticals, a biotech company in San Diego, California.

Eric is an engineer by training (Ecole Centrale de Paris), with a PhD in Protein Crystallography and a post-doc at the MRC-LMB in Cambridge, UK. His scientific contribution was in the field of mathematical methods of diffraction signal processing.

Dr. Esteban Pombo-Villar has over 35 years of experience in biopharmaceutical R&D and business development leadership. He currently serves on the Board of TargImmune Therapeutics AG, which became a fully owned Swiss affiliate of iOncologi Inc, a clinical stage company based in Florida. Prior to the acquisition, he was Chief Technology Officer at TargImmune and was formerly its CEO. Prior to joining TargImmune, he was Chief Operations Officer (COO) at Oxford BioTherapeutics. Prior to that, Dr. Pombo-Villar spent over 23 years at Novartis and Sandoz, first active in medicinal chemistry programs in neuroscience drug discovery and the last 12 years in Business Development and Alliance Management and as Head of Alliance Management at the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research (NIBR).

Dr. Pombo-Villar earned a PhD, MSc and BSc in organic chemistry from the University of Warwick (UK) and was a visiting researcher at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (UK). He then completed postdoctoral studies at the ETH in Zurich. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a member of several scientific societies, and has completed executive business studies at IMD (MTE, Lausanne), Harvard Business School (US), and the Tuck School of Business (Dartmouth, US).

Esther Melo is a Senior BD&L Director at Roche, where she has been a valuable member for over a decade. She began her journey in the discovery team before transitioning to the Pharma Partnering team nine years ago. In her current role, she focuses on in-licensing programs in the areas of Neuroscience and Ophthalmology. Throughout her tenure at Roche, Esther has significantly contributed to the company's pipeline through a variety of transactions, including research collaborations, licensing agreements, and mergers & acquisitions.

Evonne Sepsis has spent the last twenty years in healthcare investment banking. In 2009, Ms. Sepsis founded ESC Advisors, a life sciences advisory firm. The focus of ESC is on financing and M&A advisory work for life sciences companies. Prior to ESC Advisors, Ms. Sepsis was the head of healthcare investment banking at Susquehanna Financial Group. Prior to Susquehanna, she was a managing director at C.E. Unterberg, Towbin. Ms. Sepsis started her investment banking career at Salomon Brothers. Before business school, Evonne worked at APM, a healthcare consulting firm. Evonne received her MBA from Yale and Bachelor's from Northwestern.

After training as an engineer, I then moved to Tokyo for a PhD and postdoc in systems neuroscience. Back in France, I became a tenured researcher at CEA, researching early diagnosis biomarkers and advanced therapies for neurodegenerative diseases.

I joined Andera Partners' Life Sciences team in 2021 where I am now an Investment Director.

Having been involved in numerous investments, I am an observer on the boards of Cyllene Therapeutics and Exciva.

Georgia is a Vice President on SV Health Investor's Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF) investment team. DDF is the world’s largest family of specialized venture capital funds that invests exclusively in companies developing or enabling novel therapeutics for dementia. With more than $500m raised for this strategy, DDF capitalizes on global investment opportunities to fulfil its dual mandate of delivering measurable impact and generating significant financial returns. Utilizing its network of venture partners, entrepreneurs, leading scientists, and strategic partners, DDF invests in and creates new biotech companies and provides thought leadership in the field.

Prior to joining SV, Georgia worked as a life science consultant where she assessed competitive threat for pre-clinical through phase III assets and provided strategic insights across the product life cycle. Georgia completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Sloan Kettering Institute, where she investigated the interplay between inflammation and amyloid beta in Alzheimer’s disease. Georgia received a PhD in Neuroscience from Weill Cornell Medicine.

Hannah advises a wide range of public and private companies, investors, and institutions in the life sciences industry on strategic transactions that are of critical strategic importance, with particular focus in licensing and collaboration transactions, asset acquisitions and divestitures, joint ventures, R&D financing arrangements, royalty monetizations, strategic manufacturing agreements, and co-commercialization arrangements. Hannah’s deal sheet illustrates the depth of her experience, and she has also been recognized by numerous publications and ranking organizations for her work in the field, including as the Life Sciences licensing and collaboration attorney of the year by LMG Life Sciences, as the practitioner of the year for IP transactions by Managing Intellectual Property Americas, and as a Life Sciences MVP by Law360.

Hannah’s clients include all manner of players in the life sciences industry and include global biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, Takeda, and Boehringer Ingelheim, smaller biotechnology pioneers such as Blueprint Medicines, Lian Bio, iTeos Therapeutics, Kiniksa Therapeutics, Shape Therapeutics, Sana Biotechnology, and Sarepta Therapeutics, royalty purchasers such as Royalty Pharma, academic institutions such as The Broad Institute, venture funds, private equity funds, and securities underwriters.

Hanne Callewaert has over 20 years of experience in the life sciences industry, spanning senior leadership roles across pharma and biotech, including GSK, Oxurion, Oncurious, and Astrivax Therapeutics. As co‑founder and CEO of Astrivax Therapeutics, she played a pivotal role in securing €35 million in funding, successfully scaling the company from academic innovation to a clinical-stage biotech. Astrivax develops viral‑targeted immunotherapies for chronic viral infections through its proprietary Launch‑iT platform.

Hanne brings deep expertise in regulatory affairs, drug and vaccine development, and intellectual property, combined with a strong track record in building high‑performing teams and purpose‑driven company cultures. Committed to giving back, she actively shares her experience with the next generation and is a recurring guest lecturer at e.g. KU Leuven and Solvay Business School.

Hugh Nuthall is Executive Director, Search & Evaluation Neuroscience at Eli Lilly and Company, based at Lilly’s European Headquarters near London, UK. The global Search & Evaluation team complements Lilly’s internal Research & Development efforts by evaluating, in-licensing or acquiring assets and technologies and by advancing molecules through discovery and development in collaboration with external partners. Hugh leads Lilly's Search & Evaluation efforts for Neurodegeneration, with a particular interest in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS, and related diseases.

Hugh has >25 years’ experience in biomedical research with expertise in pre-clinical disease models, target validation, early drug discovery and translational pharmacology. Hugh has a successful record leading neuroscience drug discovery programs into clinical development and is keenly interested in approaches that modulate the accumulation of misfolded proteins and associated pathological processes in neurodegenerative diseases. Hugh and Lilly Neuroscience are also very interested in novel technologies, novel modalities, and novel biomarkers that could enable and expand Lilly’s research and clinical development pipeline.

Prior to Lilly Hugh worked for Merck at UK and US research sites. Hugh has a D.Phil in Molecular Medicine from the University of Oxford, carried out post-doctoral research at the Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, and is an author on >30 publications and patents.

Profile coming soon...

Jan-Philipp is Senior Director at Lilly Ventures, leading investment activities in Europe. He has more than 15 years of industry experience, mostly focused on external innovation and business development and licensing. Prior to joining Eli Lilly in 2024, he held various roles of increasing responsibility at Bayer Pharmaceuticals. He holds a PhD from Columbia University, NYC and has worked in global roles in various locations around the world.

Jeremy Griggs is an Executive Director in the Business Development team at GSK where his focus is on search and evaluation in respiratory, inflammation and immunology.

He holds a BSc in Biology from University College London and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and an occasional lecturer at the University of Cambridge. He also serves on the Board of Sitryx Therapeutics, Oxford.

Recent deals include GSK’s acquisition of Aiolos Therapeutics, acquisition of RAPT Therapeutics, clinical-stage in-license from Empirico and landmark collaboration with Hengrui Pharmaceuticals.

Prior to his roles in business development, Jeremy spent over 15 years in early-stage drug discovery at GSK, UCB and in biotech.

Profile coming soon...

Dr Jerry Wu is Venture Partner of LongRiver Investments, a global venture capital fund that closed its debut USD 385 million fund in July 2024. He previously served as Head of Investment at TusPark Holdings UK, where he oversaw the deployment of over £250 million across the UK and Europe in venture capital, cross-border M&A, and infrastructure investments. With more than 28 years of experience as both a principal scientist and investor, Jerry brings deep R&D expertise to science- and technology-driven investing. He holds a PhD in Computer Science and is a Fellow of Homerton College, University of Cambridge.

Joachim Vogt is Director Search & Evaluation International at AbbVie. He is responsible for the identification of European business and investment opportunities across all indications and technologies of interest for AbbVie and serves as key contact for European partners, including academic institutions, biotech companies, venture capital firms, governmental and non-profit organizations.

Joachim spent more than 15 years in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry in BD and research roles. He gained broad experience in the areas of in- and outlicensing of preclinical and clinical projects as well as research technologies. Before joining AbbVie, Joachim was Director of Early Stage Partnering at Roche, served as Senior Manager at Wilex AG and was Head of IP Licensing at the tech transfer office Bayerische Patentallianz. Joachim holds a diploma in chemistry and received his PhD in protein crystallography at the University of Freiburg.

Jonathan joined Brandon Capital in 2021.

Jonathan is a Partner at Brandon’s London office and serves on the boards of Pheon, Myricx Pharma, NRG Therapeutics, AstronautX, Salvina, and Catalym. Previously, he was a Managing Director at Arix Bioscience, where he built the team and portfolio, sitting on boards including Artios Pharma and VelosBio (acquired by Merck for $2.75bn). Before Arix, Jonathan was a Principal at Touchstone Innovations, helping build biotech spin-outs like Inivata (acquired for $415m). He also worked at LifeArc in drug discovery.

Jonathan holds a first-class Biology degree from Oxford, a PhD in Molecular Medicine from UCL, and an MBA from Imperial College London. He conducted postdoctoral research on cancer cell signalling at Cancer Research UK, publishing in Nature Genetics and NEJM. He is a trustee of the Autism Centre for Excellence and advises KHAN drug discovery fund.

Julia Braun is a partner in the Corporate & Securities Practice Group and Healthcare Industry Group of Baker McKenzie in Munich. She advises clients on complex cross-border and domestic transactions, with a strong focus on the healthcare and life sciences sectors. With over 15 years of experience in M&A, private equity, growth capital, and venture capital, she is widely recognized for her deep industry insight and her ability to navigate the legal and commercial intricacies of the biotech and pharmaceutical landscape in the context of transactions.

Julia’s practice is distinguished by her extensive work with biotech companies, pharmaceutical innovators, and their financial sponsors. She is known for translating scientific innovation into sound legal and commercial strategies, supporting clients across the full lifecycle of healthcare and life sciences ventures—from early-stage financing to strategic exits and international expansion. Clients value Julia’s deep sector knowledge, pragmatic approach, and ability to manage complex, multi-jurisdictional transactions.

Julia has played a key role in several transformative transactions within the life sciences sector. She advised Ariceum Therapeutics on the acquisition of Theragnostics Ltd, as well as on a carve-out asset acquisition from Ipsen Pharma. She also advised the company on the successful completion of a €25 million Series A financing round, which was co-led by EQT Life Sciences and HealthCap.

Her expertise spans the entire lifecycle of healthcare innovation, from early-stage venture financing to strategic exits. Julia has advised on numerous high-profile transactions, including advising EQT Life Sciences on Tubulis GmbH's €128 million Series B2 financing round, representing Hitachi Chemical in its acquisition of APCeth Biopharma, supporting a consortium of selling investors consortium including Boehringer Ingelheim, Forbion Capital, MP Healthcare, Sunstone Capital and Wellington Partners in an auctioned cross-border acquisition of Rigontec, advised a syndicate of investors on Cardior Pharmaceuticals' Series A financing round, and advising HeidelbergCapital and co-investors on the sale of European CRO Accovion to Clinipace Inc.

Julia holds an LL.M. from the University of Cape Town and is admitted to the German Bar. She is a frequent speaker on legal developments in the healthcare and life sciences sector and contributes to thought leadership on topics such as killer acquisitions and innovation financing. She also serves on Baker McKenzie's Diversity & Inclusion Committee.

Profile coming soon...

Katya joined Oxford Science Enterprises in September 2021, an experienced venture capitalist with over 20 years’ experience in the biotechnology industry.

At OSE, Katya leads the Life Sciences team, overseeing investments, the creation of new companies and the scale up of existing businesses, providing hands-on guidance and support to academic founders from early scientific-development to go-to-market strategies. She represents OSE on the boards of Beacon Therapeutics, GreyWolf Therapeutics, Oxford NanoImaging and SpyBiotech.

Katya started her VC career in 2002 with Alta Partners, a healthcare focused USA fund, followed by Capricorn Partners in Belgium. She has been a director of a number of public and private companies in Europe and is the past Vice-Chair of InvestEurope. She has a global network across the Life Sciences, finance, and healthcare industries.

Katya holds a PhD in Cellular & Molecular Biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, followed by a post-doc in Microbiology & Immunology from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

With over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, Dr Khatereh Ahmadi has both large pharma business development and biotech start-up experience. She was at MSD for 10 years up to October 2025, as Head of Search and Evaluation Business Development in Europe for five years, after initially leading business development and licensing in the oncology space in Europe. Prior to joining MSD, she was co-founder and CEO of reViral Ltd, a biotechnology company focused on antiviral therapies that was acquired by Pfizer. Under her leadership, the company secured a $21 million Series A funding round with investors such as Andera Partners and Orbimed. Dr. Ahmadi also played a critical role in founding the oncology company Piramed Ltd where she became head of business development and lead a comprehensive licensing deal with Genentech and later acquisition by Roche. Dr. Ahmadi has also been a consultant to a number of companies in the EU and the US in the field of oncology and has been an NED on board of Guard Therapeutics, a public Swedish company, since May 2024. Dr. Khatereh Ahmadi has a PhD in biochemistry from King's College London and held a post-doctoral position at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in London. She also holds an MBA from Henley Management College.

Profile coming soon...

Konstantin joined Secarna as CBO in June 2023 and became CEO in November 2024. Prior to this, he was CEO of AMW GmbH, a revenue-generating specialty pharmaceuticals company.

Over the last 10 years, Konstantin has held senior management positions at several biotech and pharma companies. In addition to AMW, he held key positions at Leukocare AG, Bayer AG and MorphoSys AG. During his time at AMW, he re-shaped the strategy for the company to enhance its commercial viability and to focus on AMW’s core value drivers, including operational scale-up, replenishing the pipeline, as well as refocusing on AMW’s key technology, biodegradable implants. At Leukocare, he headed all business development, sales and marketing activities, achieving year-over-year growth of approximately 50%. At MorphoSys, he held positions of increasing responsibility, and in his role as head of the pre-commercial group, he was the point person to build and grow MorphoSys's newly to be established commercial department.

Konstantin has a PhD in molecular biology from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany and holds an MBA from the University of Applied Sciences for Economics and Management.

Maria has more than twenty years of experience in the global pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, in particular within global business development, corporate finance, equity financing and global portfolio management. She has lead the business cases and negotiations on more than 100 major licensing, joint-venture, NewCo creation, equity investment, M&A, private public consortia and R&D collaboration deals. Key deals include among others the Innovent Roche global licensing deal in oncology, the Innovent Sanofi licensing and equity investment deals, the establishment of Dizal Pharmaceuticals in Shanghai, China, the establishment of Apollo Therapeutics in London, UK and the establishment of the Therapeutics Consortium in Cambridge, UK.

Prior to joining Novartis Global Business Development and Licensing team in Basel, Switzerland in September 2025, she was most recently Chief Operating Officer and Head of Europe at Innovent Biologics, based in London, UK. She joined Innovent in 2020 from AstraZeneca, where she was Global Head of Transactions for Oncology R&D Business Development and Licensing. Maria started her professional career as a research fellow in immunology at Harvard Medical School (Boston, USA), then worked in business development at Cell Genesys (San Francisco, USA) prior to moving to London to join IPSEN. At IPSEN, she was initially responsible for oncology business development and then subsequently promoted to Vice-President Global Oncology Portfolio Management before moving to AstraZeneca in 2012.

Maria has an M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark, a Ph.D. in Tumor Immunology from UCL and an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley. She has been a Director of the board of Spirogen, Apollo Therapeutics, Fortvita Biologics (Europe) as well as the Swedish Chamber of Commerce (UK) where she also served as Chair of the Finance Committee. She speaks fluent Swedish, French, Danish, German and English and upper intermediate Mandarin.

Profile coming soon...

Mike heads Lumanity’s Advanced Therapies and Rare Diseases practices specializing in strategic development of platform technologies and applications for genetically defined patient populations and broad polygenic diseases. He also co-heads the hematologic oncology and cardiometabolics practices.

He has 25+ years of experience in biotech ventures supporting new company creation and defining strategic development and early commercial strategy for academic and biotech inventions pertaining to nucleic acids, gene therapy and cellular platforms applied across monogenetic diseases and oncology. Mike studied the molecular basis of cancer at the Kimmel Cancer Institute and is recognized for his extensive intellectual property and publication portfolio pertaining to recombinational DNA repair and molecular diagnostics. Mike is a co-inventor of non-nuclease gene editing methodology currently used commercially in agricultural trait improvement and in development for therapeutic applications.

Mike holds an MBA, with a concentration in Biotechnology from the Alfred Lerner School of Business and Economics, at the University of Delaware, an MS in Molecular Pharmacology from Thomas Jefferson University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from the University of Delaware. Industry positions involved translational research, strategic planning, technology transfer, finance and business development.

Mike is a Member of the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Center Advisory Council, enjoys mentoring early-stage life science entrepreneurs and is a member of ASGCT, ARM, SITC, ASCO and AHA professional societies.

Michael Hübner is Director for Search & Evaluation in the EMEA region, and he serves as the country lead in Switzerland, Austria and Italy for External Innovation at Johnson & Johnson. In this role he establishes collaborations and strategic partnerships with researchers, healthcare entrepreneurs and life science companies across Johnson & Johnson’s therapeutic areas. He is a member of the Johnson & Johnson Switzerland Leadership Team and he actively advises startups as a board member of the Swiss Healthcare Licensing Group and the BaseLaunch accelerator.

Prior to joining Johnson & Johnson, Michael was Global Business Development and Licensing Manager at Roche.

Dr. Michael Altorfer is the CEO of the Swiss Biotech Association. He has more than 25 years of experience in the life science industry comprising both big pharma and smaller biotech organizations. As a member of the Executive Committee he supported the build-up of Polyphor Ltd in Allschwil in many different roles (Head BD&L, CFO, COO and CEO). Michael started his career as a scientist in pharmaceutical research at Sandoz, Ciba-Geigy (Summit, NJ, USA), and Roche. From 1996 to 2001 he held program management and line management roles at the investment bank UBS Warburg.

Michael studied Natural Sciences at the ETH and he obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Dr. H.-J. Hansen (University of Zurich) and Prof. Dr. K. Müller (Roche) and holds an MBA degree from the University of Rochester, NY, USA.

Miquel Vila-Perelló, PhD, is a co-founder and CEO of SpliceBio, a genetic medicines company on a mission to expand the universe of diseases that can be treated with gene therapies. Miquel received both his B.Sc and Master's degree in Organic Chemistry from the University of Barcelona, after which he joined the Laboratory of Synthesis and Structure of Peptides to pursue his PhD. Upon graduating in 2005, he joined Prof. Muir's lab at The Rockefeller University (New York, NY, YSA) as a postdoctoral researcher, where he carried out research on the field of chemical biology and contributed to the development and application of Expressed Protein Ligation methodologies using inteins and also worked on the design of strategies for the control of intein activity. Six years later, in 2011, he was appointed Research Scholar at Princeton University where he led a research group working on the development of intein-based applications for protein chemistry and was responsible for the Protein Center in the Department of Chemistry. In 2014 he moved back to his hometown, Barcelona, and together with Prof. Tom W. Muir and others co-founded ProteoDesign, the seed of what would ultimately become SpliceBio, to develop and commercialize the intein technology they had jointly invented at Princeton University. After some years of further validating the potential of the technology in the development of biotherapeutics, they decided to focus entirely on gene therapy, rebranding the company as SpliceBio in 2020 in conjunction with a seed financing led by Ysios Capital and joined by Asabys Partners. And last year, in 2022, SpliceBio raised the largest series A ever in Spain's history, a 50M€ round co-led by UCB Ventures and Ysios Capital with the participation of New Enterprise Associates, Novartis Ventures, Gilde Healthcare and Asabys Partners.

Nuno Alves serves as Business Lead working for Astellas BD team in Cambridge (UK). where his role is to identify, evaluate and negotiate opportunities for external collaboration and innovation. This includes direct investment, licensing deals, and other types of deal making.

With a PhD in Clinical Neurosciences from the University of Cambridge and an MBA from the London School of Economics, Nuno worked in different consulting and venture roles within the healthcare sector, at the intersection of biotech and investment. He has also co-founded a transcriptomics company in Barcelona. He is passionate about new innovative ways to make, communicate and improve science through a synergy of academic, industry and investment resources.

Odile is a Partner at Bioqube Ventures, a biotech VC firm headquartered in Belgium with presence in the US and Switzerland. She also serves as a member of the Evaluation Board of the Wyss Foundation (Wyss Zurich), a BD advisor to Superlab Suisse and a Healthcare Advisor to Bootstrap Europe.

Odile Rundquist holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Geneva and completed her master’s thesis in oncology at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego. She began her career as a financial analyst covering major European pharmaceutical companies for Swiss and German banks, a role she held for over ten years. She later served as a Scientific Advisor at the family office of André Hoffmann, Vice-Chairman of Roche and representative of Roche’s founding family, for seven years.

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Peter has more than twenty years of experience in inbound and outbound transactions in the biopharma sector. He has acquired a deep understanding of the transaction environment in our industry, be it M&A, licensing or partnerships. He is currently Senior Vice President Corporate & Business Development at Genmab, responsible for all BD activities encompassing discovery, clinical and commercial stage. Under his leadership, Genmab transacted its first M&A in its history in 2024 by acquiring ProfoundBio for $1.8B. Prior to joining Genmab, Peter worked for more than a decade at Novartis in Basel, Switzerland as Head Transactions Immunology, Global Head BD&L Neuroscience and Deputy Head Global M&A executing multiple transactions such as Novartis first RLT and gene-therapy acquisitions, for a total transaction value of more than $30B. He started his career in the biopharma sector in the M&A department of UCB SA in Brussels, Belgium.

He began his professional career at PwC (former Coopers & Lybrand) as Certified Public Auditor and Tax Consultant. Peter holds an engineering degree in Applied Economics with majors in Accountancy and Tax from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.

Regina is a Managing Director at Angelini Ventures. Prior to this role, she was the Managing Partner at Wellington Partners Life Sciences (WPLS) and represented the WPLS funds on the Boards of Minervax, Seamless, Sidekick Health, SNIPR Biome, and TRiCares. She was a founding investor in Rigontec (acquired by MSD), Sapiens (acquired by Medtronic), Middle Peak Medical (acquired by Symetis / Boston Scientific), invested in Themis Medical (acquired by MSD). In addition, she serves on the Board of the BII BioInnovation Institute, is the Chairperson in of the Vienna university founders organization inits and is a member of the advisory group for KfW Capital and the SME council of the German Ministry of Economics BMWK.

Before this role, Regina led the European life sciences efforts of Boston-based Atlas Venture. She was the founding investor in Bicycle Therapeutics (NASDAQ: BCYC), F-star, and Jenavalve, and served on several Boards, including U3 Pharma (acquired by Daiichi Sankyo), Nitec Pharma (became part of Horizon Pharma NASDAQ: HRZN), Shanghai-based Novamed, and has been an external director at GlaxoSmithKline’s Respiratory TA Board. Before, Regina worked for Apax Partners, and started to build her extensive network in the global healthcare industry during her tenure at McKinsey. In the 90s, Regina gained initial insights into the fast-growing biotech sector as post-doctoral researcher at the MRC Cambridge UK. Regina studied chemical engineering in Vienna and holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry.

Renée Aguiar-Lucander is CEO of Hansa Biopharma, a European based commercial stage company with a novel immunomodulatory technology based on a proprietary platform. She joined Hansa in April 2025 and was previously CEO of Calliditas Therapeutics AB, where she successfully built and led the company to achieve the first ever accelerated approval by the cardio renal division of the FDA. During her tenure, the Company listed on NASDAQ in both Sweden and the U.S. and successfully launched TARPEYO, the first ever approved drug for IgA nephropathy, a rare kidney disease. The Company had a fully integrated US commercial entity generating product sales in excess of $100m in 2023. In September 2024, Calliditas was acquired by Asahi Kasei Corporation for over $1bn. Prior to Calliditas, Aguiar-Lucander had a long and successful career in the healthcare investment sector, holding senior investment roles in Omega Funds and 3i Group. She is a Board member of AC Immune and Inventiva Pharma as well as being a senior advisor to Athyrium Capital Management.

Richard Munton is a senior investment and business development professional with a global healthcare career spanning over 20 years in research, venture capital and business development.

Richard currently works at Roche focussing on partnering opportunities in neuroscience and ophthalmology, building on previous roles in AC Immune, AstraZeneca, BioMedPartners and Novartis.

Sam Fazeli is a senior analyst and the head of research for global industries at Bloomberg Intelligence, a dynamic platform for in-depth research available on the Bloomberg Professional service at BI . Dr. Fazeli also specializes in global pharmaceuticals.

Dr. Fazeli brings with him over 26 years of experience conducting equity research as a pharmaceutical analyst, working at firms such as Nomura International and HSBC.

Prior to joining Bloomberg in 2010, Dr. Fazeli worked at Piper Jaffray, Ltd. as a pharmaceutical analyst and head of European research. Before transitioning to investment banking, Dr. Fazeli was a research scientist for seven years.

Dr. Fazeli has been ranked a top analyst by both the U.K. and Pan-European Extel surveys. He received a bachelor’s of science from Cardiff University, and a Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of London.

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Sarah is President of the Swiss Healthcare Licensing Group (HLG), an association of biopharma dealmakers that supports skills development, education and networking.

Sarah is CBO of the innovative Swiss T-cell engager company CDR-Life, where she focuses on the creation of business development opportunities, corporate communication, business intelligence, and commercial opportunity input.

Previously as CBO of Cureteq Sarah was responsible for building a compelling portfolio of differentiated assets driven by AI insights. Before that, as CBO at VectivBio, Sarah supported IPO on NASDAQ, lead an acquisition to build pipeline and delivered a large Japan Phase 3 partnership. She also introduced VectivBio to Ironwood, leading to the $1bio exit in 2023.

Previously at Lonza Sarah built and led the outlicensing business unit. With a focus on new modalities such as synthetic biology, she drove in-licensing and adoption of novel technology, and led Lonza’s global R&D organisation in 2019.

Sarah knows the innovation and finance landscape in pharma and biotech well having previously led Sanofi’s external science and partnering organisation. Prior to Sanofi, Sarah managed global teams in several roles at Roche and AstraZeneca and has overseen M&A transactions, integrations, spinouts, regulatory submissions and global brand launches.

Sarah holds an MA and DPhil from Oxford University and an MBA from Manchester Business School, where she was also a Visiting Fellow and now sits on the Advisory Board. She is a firm supporter of initiatives supporting women in science and innovation careers.

Stefan joined Gilde Healthcare in 2015. As Partner in the Venture&Growth team, he focuses on capital investments in the biopharmaceutical and therapeutics sectors.

Before joining Gilde, Stefan worked at Merck KGaA where he completed international assignments in the firm’s Global Business Intelligence and M Ventures divisions. Prior to this he was involved in various consulting projects spanning the pharmaceutical and chemical departments at Merck and co-moderated Merck Serono’s innovation competitions.

Stefan gained a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and a Master’s in Biotechnology from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), and a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) in Bioscience Enterprise from the University of Cambridge. He completed his PhD with Nobel Laureate Sir Gregory Winter at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where he developed a bicyclic peptide-based drug discovery platform.

Stephan is a Director at BaseLaunch. He has been responsible for establishing and building the incubator from the ground up and has been involved in sourcing, launching, growing and financing numerous biotech companies. Stephan joined the organization from stints in medical affairs at Lipomed and research at Roche. He obtained his PhD from Novartis' Friedrich Miescher Institute and studied Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the ETH Zurich.

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Thibaut Roulon started his career as a scientist in a US biotech company.

In 2005 he joined Bioam Gestion, a venture capital firm investing in life science companies. In 2010, Bioam merged with Bpifrance, a leading French investment firm investing in SMEs and mid-Tier companies. Bpifrance manages several funds dedicated to life science investments, including the InnoBio funds.

Thibaut is in charge of venture capital investments in life sciences companies.

He is a graduate of the Ecole Centrale de Paris and holds a PhD from the Pierre & Marie Curie University.

Tim is Executive Partner, Managing Director at Abingworth LLP, a leading global life sciences venture investment firm, which has recently become part of Carlyle (NASDAQ: CG). Tim joined Abingworth in 2005 having been Chief Executive of Abingworth’s portfolio company, Astex Therapeutics, and was instrumental in establishing it as one of the leading UK biotechnology companies which was acquired by Otsuka Pharmaceuticals and has had 3 important medicines approved by FDA. Tim has held a number of senior management positions in the US and Europe, including CEO of both Datascope Corp. and Thackray Inc, and General Manager at Baxter UK. Tim has a BSc from Exeter University and an MBA from INSEAD. He is a former Director of the BIA and sat on the BVCA Venture Committee and the Wellcome Trust / NHS Health Innovation Challenge Fund. During his time at Abingworth Tim has taken board roles in a number of companies including Adaptate Biotherapeutics, Astex, Avillion, Fovea, GammaDelta Therapeutics, MEDIAN Technologies, PowderMed, Scorpion Therapeutics, Sientra and Venatorx.

Vanessa joined Forbion in 2022 and is currently a Principal. She focuses on driving investments and company-building efforts across various therapeutic areas and modalities.

Vanessa currently serves as a director on the boards of Elevara Medicines, Gate Bioscience, VectorY Therapeutics, and a stealth mode women's health company, and holds observer positions on the boards of Orbis Medicines, Rathlin, and Sitala Bio. Previously, Vanessa played a key role in leading due diligence and was a board observer for Mariana Oncology (acquired by Novartis in 2024), and AIRNA.

Before joining Forbion, Vanessa worked in the transaction advisory and corporate strategy space. Earlier in her career, she worked as a scientist and co-Principal Investigator at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), contributing to a translational drug development project.

Vanessa holds a BSc in Biotechnology from the University of Pavia (Italy), an MSc in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (Germany), and a PhD in Chemical Biology from EPFL (Switzerland).

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