ROBIN OFFORD, PHD, Chairman
Prof. Offord has made his PHD and postgrade within the molecular biology lab of Cambridge University, UK. After having worked with three Nobel Price winners (Sanger, Milstein and Klug), he has taught at Oxford University for 14 years. In 1980, he became the President of the Fundamental Medical Research Section at University of Geneva, then the Director of the Department of Biochemistry. Prof. Offord has been a consultant and scientific advisor to large pharma and biotech companies for over 25 years. He has co-founded several start-ups, including GeneProt, of which he was the first Chairman, Ciphergen in California and the Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics.

STEPHEN BURLEY, MD, PHD
Stephen Burley is the chief scientific officer of Structural GenomiX, Inc. (SGX), San Diego, USA. Prior to joining SGX, he was the Richard M. and Isabel P. Furlaud professor at The Rockefeller University and a full investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Burley was also the principal investigator of the New York Structural Genomics Research Consortium NIH-funded Center for Structural Genomics. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the New York Academy of Sciences. Burley received an M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School and as a Rhodes Scholar, he received a D.Phil. in Molecular Biophysics from Oxford University. He received a B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Western Ontario.

JEAN-YVES LE COTONNEC, MD, PHD
Dr. Jean-Yves le Cotonnec is Founder and President of Triskel Integrated Services S.A., Geneva, Switzerland, a company providing integrated strategic services to the pharmaceutical and device industry. Before he held several management positions in clinical development at Serono, Geneva, Switzerland, at the “Institut des Technologies pour la Santé”, Geneva, Switzerland and at Zyma S.A. (now Novartis Healthcare), Nyon, Switzerland. He has worked extensively towards the development and registration of more than 10 pharmaceutical products, most of which are today successfully marketed with worldwide annual sales in excess of $1.5 billion.

DENIS HOCHSTRASSER, MD
Dr. Hochstrasser, a practicing internist and clinical chemist, is the President of the Clinical Medicine Section and the Director of the Clinical Pathology Department at the Geneva University Hospitals. He oversees all computing activities in Geneva University's Faculty of Medicine, as well as running an internationally renowned proteomics research group. Dr. Hochstrasser had the foresight, over 15 years ago, to initiate work on software development for what is now called proteomics. He has been a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of numerous protein-science firms and has consulted for several major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in Europe and the US. Dr. Hochstrasser was also a co-founder of GeneBio SA, Geneprot Inc and of the Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics.

HERVÉ DE KERGROHEN, MD, MBA
Hervé de Kergrohen is a medical doctor with broad industry knowledge. After taking his MBA degree from Insead, Fontainebleau, he held several positions in R&D and marketing areas for international pharmaceutical groups. Coming back to Switzerland in 1995, he has managed large global healthcare funds since then. Since 2002, he has joined the management of CDC-Ixis-Innovation in the area of life sciences, and seats on the board of several companies in the biotech field. Dr. de Kergrohen is also the Chairman and head of the organizing committee of BioData, an international forum dedicated to Life sciences that is held once a year in Geneva.

ROLLAND-YVES MAUVERNAY, PHD
Dr Rolland-Yves Mauvernay is founder and President of the private held Debio pharmaceutical corporate, based in Lausanne Switzerland.
Dr. Mauvernay has obtained several PhDs in biology, bacteriology and pharmacy from the University of Strasbourg. In 1953, he founded the pharmaceutical laboratories in Riom that he successively sold to Akzo Nobel. In 1979, in order to be fully dedicated to the finding of innovative therapeutics, Dr Mauvernay founded Debiopharm. He also created the new company Debio R.P. (Debio Pharmaceutical Research), specialized in the development and making of delayed formulation drugs, Debioclinic, a CRO based in Paris and Debioinnnovation to finance and support start-ups, completing the corporate objectives in the matter of licensing-in of innovative products.

TIMOTHY WELLS, PHD
Dr. Wells is Senior Executive Vice President of Research at Serono since March 2003. Before then, he was the Head of Discovery at Serono, with worldwide responsibility for the discovery organization, with sites in Geneva, Boston and Ivrea, Italy. Dr. Wells has a successful scientific career in biotechnology and is well known in the field of cytokine biology. Prior to joining Serono in 1998, Dr. Wells worked for Glaxo Welcome for several years, rising to Head of Biochemistry and Immunology. Between 1987 and 1990 he worked at SmithKline Beecham in the UK on the molecular enzymology of arteriosclerosis. He obtained a PhD in the chemistry of enzyme action and protein engineering from Imperial College, London, and holds a BA in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University, UK.

Lucienne CICUREL, Ph. D.
Dr Lucienne Cicurel completed her Licence and Diploma in Medical Biology from the University of Geneva, Faculté de Médecine and then moved to the University of Illinois, Medical Center (Chicago, USA) to obtain a PhD in Biochemistry/Immunology. She pursued postgraduate research in somatic cell genetics at the Wistar Institute (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA) and in cancer immunobiology at the NCI (Frederick, USA). She finally returned to Switzerland at the University of Geneva, to take on a position of Chargée de Recherche. During this entire period, Lucienne has taught and coached undergraduate and graduate university students.
Lucienne thereafter joined Novartis Consumer Health (ex-ZYMA, part of the CIBA Group), gaining experience in pharmaceutical development as well as in project and portfolio management. Additional experience in management, lead Lucienne to act as liaison with international marketing, business development and Group affiliates.
In 1997, Lucienne joined Debiopharm Group, as a member of the Management Committee, initially responsible for setting up the company organization as well as planning and coordinating the project portfolio. Currently Director, External Affairs, Lucienne presents and represents the Debiopharm Group at national and international events as well as manages specific projects.

        The Team Eclosion
        Board of Directors

 

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