Hybrigenics Names New CEO and Board Chairman
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Hybrigenics has announced the appointments of Remi Delansorne as Chief Executive Officer, and Daan Ellens as Chairman of the Board. The appointments follow the death earlier this year of Bart Kwist, president and CEO.
Remi Delansorne was previously vice-president for R&D at Hybrigenics. The appointment of an insider is confirmation that the company plans to pursue the same strategy: it will continue its drug discovery efforts, while growing the revenues from high quality proteomics services for public and private research laboratories.
Delansorne, 46, has 20 years experience in drug discovery and development. He joined Theramex (Monaco) in 1985, a specialist in reproductive endocrinology and hormone-dependent oncology, where he became head of pre-clinical R&D in 1999.
Following the takeover of Theramex by Merck-Lipha, he was called in 2002 to head global research on diabetes at Merck KGaA (Lyon, Chilly-Mazarin and Darmstadt).
He joined Hybrigenics in 2004 as vice-president for R&D. Delansorne obtained a doctorate in veterinary medicine at the Alfort Veterinary School and completed a thesis in life sciences at the University of Paris 6.
“My goal is to continue the work of Bart Kwist and Donny Strosberg, the founder of Hybrigenics,” said Delansorne.
“Hybrigenics' achievements have always relied since its creation on the quality of both its scientific teams working on target identification and validation, and its proteomics and bioinformatics technologies.”
“In the last two years, Hybrigenics has developed additional know-how either internally or through recruitment.”
“This has allowed us to begin screening chemical libraries against our lead targets and obtain a number of new proprietary molecules which are active against cancer cell lines.”
He added, “I will focus on three main objectives: 1. Create value out of our discovery findings through new partnerships with pharma or biotech companies, 2. Stimulate the growth of our commercial operations based on our fee-for-service yeast two-hybrid screening activity 3. Explore all opportunities to build a development stage product portfolio.”
Daan J. Ellens brings an additional international experience of biotechnology industry experience to Hybrigenics.
He has successfully handled an initial public offering and a merger-acquisition amongst other transactions.
“I am delighted to be joining Hybrigenics and to contribute to its success,” said Ellens.
“I am looking forward to strengthening the company's international network in the fields of corporate finance, fund raising, merchant banking and mergers and acquisitions, not forgetting strategic consulting.”
Ellens, 57, has a PhD in molecular biology from the State University of Utrecht and an MBA from the University of Eindhoven.
He joined the pharmaceutical group AKZO-Nobel in 1980. In 1994, he became CEO of RheinBiotech where, thanks to a successful IPO and a 2002 merger with Bema Biotech, he turned the company into a major player in vaccinology.
Ellens has his own biotechnology consultancy firm, Elkerim. He is a board member of Zealand Pharma (Denmark), RheinBiotech (Netherlands) and 4-Antibody (Switzerland).
