The Company's management team consists of 3 highly experienced and complementary biotech executives with a successful track record of therapeutic antibody discovery, development and corporate deal making.
Management Team
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Chief Executive Officer
Tim developed broad business development and operational management experience as senior Business Development Manager at Ablynx NV (B).
Tim accompanied the growth of the company from its series A round (2003) up to a successful IPO on Euronext Brussels in 2007 and amongst others inked a $265 million research & development deal with Boehringer Ingelheim in 2007 and performed all in-licensing activities. In addition he was involved in all major financing rounds of Ablynx including the IPO and has extensive due diligence experience.
Prior to joining Ablynx, he has held various management positions with the Procter & Gamble Company in R&D and Corporate New Business Development, where he conceived and developed several new to the world products. Amongst those was a healthcare innovation winning the United Nations ICC World Business Award in 2004.
Tim holds a Master of Science degree in Bio-Engineering from the University of Gent (B) and received general management training at INSEAD (F) and The Vlerick School of Management (executive MBA)(B). Tim serves on the Board of Optidrive, a High-Tech spin-off from the University of Leuven (B) as an independent director.
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Chief Scientific Officer
Hans is active in the antibody engineering field since 1989, initially at AKZO Nobel. Subsequently at the University of Maastricht, he made a very large non-immune human Fab library, now an important asset of Dyax. From 1998 to 2002 he was responsible for the discovery of llama VHH's at Unilever.
From 2002 up to joining arGEN-X, Hans worked at Ablynx NV, as Director Technology Development, and the last two years as Senior Director Discovery Reseach. He was responsible for setting up the Nanobody® discovery engine, and he introduced the VHH formatting, which turned out to be the major advantage of Ablynx's Nanobody® platform. He was closely involved in the development of the Nanoclone® methodology based on B cell selection.
During his career Hans has discovered therapeutic antibody leads against over 10 therapeutic targets, several of which are now in the preclinical and clinical stage. Hans holds a Master of Science degree in Biochemistry and a PhD in Molecular Immunology from the University of Maastricht. Hans is professor immunology at the university of Utrecht.
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Chief Developement Officer
Torsten holds a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Tübingen, Germany. In 1995 he joined the group of Prof. Ralf A. Reisfeld at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California as a postoc and extended his know how in immunology with his work on immunocytokines (recombinant antibody cytokine fusion proteins), recombinant antibodies and cytokines.
In 1997 Torsten joined Micromet AG in Munich, Germany as a scientist. He focused on the pre-clinical characterization of recombinant antibodies and BiTEs® (bispecific T cell engagers) and soon headed the pre-clinical development at Micromet as the Director of Preclinical Development.
In 2003 he joined Ablynx NV as Director Therapeutic Drug Development. He then became Senior Director Pre-clinical Development with the overall resposibility for pharmacology, toxicology, bioanalytics, and CMC as well as for early clinical development.
Torsten has in total progressed 3 antibody products from preclinical research stage into PhI clinical trials.
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Senior Director, Targets & Programs
Michael has 18 years of successful drug discovery experience in biological and small molecules both in large pharma (GSK) and in the biotechnology industry (DevGen, Ablynx) spanning several therapeutic areas. In particular, he has extensive experience in target selection, and in project leadership and management.
In addition to his in-house roles, Michael has worked as an independent consultant for a variety of European biotechnology companies.
He holds a PhD from University of North Carolina, USA, a BA in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University, UK and complemented this with an Executive MBA from ESSEC-Mannheim business schools.
Tim Van Hauwermeiren, MSc, EMBA