Company

Dr. René Aerts

Ex Merck Exec. with global responsability for Animal Health

Dr. René Aerts is the Founder of RA-Consultancy BV and currently serves as Partner at NovioCap BV. He retired from Merck/MSD Animal Health in 2013 where he had been a member of the Executive Committee since 2008 as Global Head Vaccine Research. He previous held senior positions in Manufacturing Operations, Regulatory Affairs and R&D at Intervet International. He holds non-executive and Advisory Board positions at AGC Biologics (USA), The Jenner Institute (UK), ImmunoValley (NL), Schothorst Feed Research BV (NL) and Alternative Gene Expression Ltd (ES). Mr. Aerts received a PhD in Bioanalytics and Pharmacochemistry from the Free University of Amsterdam in 1990.

Dr. Damià Tormo

Founder and managing partner of Columbus Venture Partners

Damià has been widely recognized for his capacity to combine a brilliant scientific career with that of an entrepreneur and investor. He received his PhD in immunology and molecular genetics from the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn (Germany) and holds a Masters in international management of biotechnology from the IE Business School. During his scientific tenure he was actively engaged in R&D in and for institutions including University of Cambridge (UK), Michigan University (USA) and Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (CNIO) and authored publications in peer reviewed journals including Nature and Cancer Cell. As a founder and managing partner of Columbus Venture Partners, he has helped developed numerous biotechnology companies in Europe and the US, serving on the Board of Artax Biopharma, Viralgen Vector Core, Polypeptide Therapeutic Solutions, Bioncotech Therapeutics and Sanifit.

Jean Stéphenne

Ex member of the Corp. Exec. Team of GSK an CEO of GSK Biologicals (now GSK Vaccines)

Jean Stéphenne is a highly-experienced life sciences executive, who has served in senior leadership roles at a large number of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, most recently as Chairman of TiGenix (acquired by Takeda in 2019). Jean was previously a Member of the Corporate Executive Team of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Chief Executive of GSK Biologicals (now GSK Vaccines). During his 40-year tenure, he grew a company of 50 people into a fully integrated worldwide leader in vaccine development, with 12,000 employees. He currently serves on the Board of various life sciences companies including Vaxxilon (DE), OncoDNA (BE), BoneTherapeutics (BE), CureVac (DE) and Bepharbel (BE) as well as in biotech investments funds Vesalius (BE) and Merieux Investments (FR). For his contribution to the Belgian economy and global public health, he has received diverse business recognitions and was honored with various titles by the Belgian and British governments.

Nicola Zambon

Investor

Nicola Zambon has 23 years of M&A and principal investment experience. He is the founder and managing partner of Cleon Capital, an independent advisory and investment company with offices in Madrid and Milan. Prior to founding Cleon, he served as director and partner of the private equity firms Investindustrial and Ergon Capital. Nicola is a board member of 15 companies located in various jurisdictions across Europe.

Claudia Jiménez

Investor

Claudia started her career in 1998 in Investment Banking, where she managed M&A projects across various industries for WestLB AG. After completing an international MBA at Instituto de Empresa in Spain, she joined Cellerix SA in 2006, where she contributed to the company’s growth through its series B and C financing rounds, its merger with TiGenix SA and the partnering of its lead asset with Takeda in a licensing deal worth up to €380M. Following the TiGenix’ Nasdaq IPO, Claudia became responsible for investor relations and communications until the Company’s acquisition by Takeda in 2018 in a deal worth >€500M.

From 2019 until Feb 2022 Claudia was the CEO of Algenex SL. Under her leadership, Algenex grew from a university - based R&D site to a GMP-grade CDMO with capacity to manufacture up to 100M vaccine doses per year, a first vaccine approved by EMA and UK regulators and signed commercial agreements with leading companies in the human and animal health space. Algenex was recognized as the best animal health company in Europe in 2021 by IHS (part of S&P global).

Julen Oyarzabal

Partner at Columbus Venture

Dr. Julen Oyarzabal has spent more than 20 years working in the drug discovery and biopharmaceutical industry. He started his career as researcher at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and later he joined the University of Southampton. In 2001, Dr. Oyarzabal joined Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical R&D where he led several projects in the CNS therapeutic area. Five years later, he set up and led the Computational Medicinal Chemistry section at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO). In 2010, Dr. Oyarzabal joined the Center for Applied Medical Research (CIMA), at the University of Navarra, to set up the small molecule discovery platform and led the Molecular Therapeutics Program. From 2013 to 2018 he was also director of Translational Sciences leading scouting activities, from the University Hospital and CIMA.

He is co-inventor of more than 25 patents and published more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific articles; he (co-)led publications in prestigious journals such as Nature Comm, Angew Chem, or J Med Chem. In addition, Dr. Oyarzabal is on the Board of Directors for the Academic Drug Discovery Consortium (ADDC) and, from 2012 to 2019, he was member of the European Medicines Agency (EMA). As partner of Columbus Venture Partners, he has served on the Board of Polypeptide Therapeutic Solutions.