Naarden, The Netherlands, 19 November 2012 - Forbion Capital Partners today announced the appointment of Dr Kapil Dhingra, formerly global leader in oncology at Roche, and Prof. John Kastelein, Professor of Medicine at the Department of Vascular Medicine at the University of Amsterdam, as Scientific Advsors. They will be advising on oncology and metabolic disease investment opportunies respectively.
Dr Kapil Dhingra is a medical oncologist and a physician-scientist. He is the founder of KAPital Consulting, LLC and was formerly Leader of the Disease Biology Leadership Team at Roche. He joined Roche in 1999 and became Vice President, Oncology where he played a key role in the expansion of the Roche oncology enterprise leading to the Company becoming the global leader in oncology. Earlier in his career he was a Clinical Research Physician at Eli Lilly and was at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas. He received his medical training at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi followed by Internal Medicine Residency at Lincoln Medical Center, New York, and Hematology-Oncology fellowship at Emory University, Atlanta, GA. Dr Dhingra holds several Board positions, including at Forbion’s portfolio company Exosome Diagnostics. Previously, he was a board member at BioVex and Micromet that both resulted in exits worth more than a milliion each and included Forbion as one of their shareholders.
John J.P. Kastelein is Professor of Medicine at the Department of Vascular Medicine at the University of Amsterdam, where he holds the Strategic Chair of Genetics of Cardiovascular Disease. He also chairs the National Scientific Committee on Familial Hypercholesterolemia (EHC) and is a member of the Royal Dutch Society for Medicine & Physics, the Council for Basic Science of the American Heart Association and the European Atherosclerosis Society. In addition, he is a board member of the International Task Force for CHD Prevention and was recently appointed to the Executive Board of the International Atherosclerosis Society and is a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology. Until 2009 he was the president of the Dutch Atherosclerosis Society and in 2011, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Dutch Heart Foundation. He was the visiting Professor at the Center for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver and co-founded AMT N.V. (currently Forbion portfolio company uniQure B.V.) and Xenon Pharmaceuticals Inc. (formerly Xenon Genetics Inc.). He also set up a foundation for the identification of patients with classical familial hypercholesterolaemia in the Netherlands and founded the Lipid Research Clinic at the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam. He was trained in medical genetics, lipidology and molecular biology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
Sander Slootweg, Managing Partner at Forbion Capital Partners said: “We are very pleased to include two investment advisors in our team, Dr Dhingra and Prof. Kastelein, who are renowned industry experts in their respective fields. Both have already been instrumental in identifying new investment opportunities and have worked hands-on with several of our portfolio companies either as advisors and/or as non-executive directors. At Forbion we are confident that their expertise will add substantial value to our business.”
For further information please contact
Forbion Capital Partners
Sander Slootweg
+31 35 699 3015
sander.slootweg@forbion.com
College Hill Life Sciences (on behalf of Forbion)
Melanie Toyne Sewell / Anastasios Koutsos
+44 20 7866 7856
forbion@collegehill.com
About Forbion Capital Partners
Forbion Capital Partners is a dedicated Life Sciences venture capital firm with offices in Naarden, The Netherlands, and Munich, Germany. Forbion invests in life sciences companies in drug discovery & development as well as medical device companies addressing substantial unmet medical needs. Forbion’s investment team of nine investment professionals has built an impressive performance track record since the late nineties with successful investments in Rhein Biotech, Crucell, Neutec, Glycart, Borean, Impella, Alantos, Acorda, Fovea, PanGenetics, Argenta Discovery and most recently Biovex and Pathway Medical. Current assets under management exceed $550M, split between four active funds and comprising some 29 promising portfolio companies. Forbion Capital Partners Fund II is supported by the European Investment Fund through its ERP and LfA facilities. Forbion co-manages Biogeneration Ventures, an early stage fund focused on (academic) spin-outs and seed investments in the Netherlands. For more information, please visit www.forbion.com.
