Brunswick, Germany, June 15, 2010 – InSCREENeX GmbH, a start-up company that develops and commercializes novel cellular screening technologies, announces the appointment of Dr. Henrik L. Luessen to the position of Chief Business Officer. He will be responsible for business and strategic development with a particular focus on launching the company’s innovative SCREENflex™ and CI-SCREEN™ technologies which can significantly improve biopharmaceutical drug discovery and validation.
Henrik L. Luessen brings more than 10 years of business development and strategic planning experience within the biopharmaceutical industry to InSCREENeX. He is founder and Managing Director of Tytonis B.V., a partner within a group of highly experienced, independent advisors providing a broad range of strategic, corporate and business development services to emerging life-science companies (www.tytonis.com). In this role, he supported InSCREENeX during the spin-off process last year.
“Following our excellent cooperation, we are delighted to have attracted Henrik now as a member of our team”, Roland Schucht, Chief Executive Officer of InSCREENeX comments. “With his proven track record and extensive network in the biopharmaceutical industry, he is ideally suited to help us shape InSCREENeX’ growth strategy and build a strong market position based on our proprietary technology platforms, SCREENflex™ and CI-SCREEN™”.
While SCREENflex™ allows the production of stable cell lines for primary screening in half the time that is usually required, CI-SCREEN™ enables the design of cells with tissue-like characteristics suited for secondary screening and initial ADME/TOX evaluation.
“I firmly believe that both technologies will equip the industry with the most efficient toxicology and efficacy screening tools that are currently available,” Henrik L. Luessen says. “Moreover, I have very much enjoyed working with the founding team and its shareholders during the spin-off process. I am therefore excited to join InSCREENeX as CBO and look forward to jointly developing the company and its technologies to their full potential.”
Besides his roles as Chief Business Officer of InSCREENeX and Managing Director of Tytonis, Dr. Luessen also acts as Chief Business Officer of Activaero GmbH. Prior to founding Tytonis, he worked as Director Business Development at OctoPlus (EuroNext: OCTO), which he helped to develop from a group of 16 employees to a 130 people market leader in biopharmaceutical product development until their IPO in 2006. Before OctoPlus, Henrik L. Luessen was Manager Corporate Development at LTS LOHMANN Therapie Systeme AG, responsible for business development in the field of transdermal delivery systems and new platform technologies worldwide. He obtained his PhD from the Leiden/Amsterdam Center of Drug Research in Pharmaceutical Technology. He is heading the focus group »Pharmaceutical Biotechnology« at the International Association of Pharmaceutical Technology, Germany (APV) and has been serving as Governor of the Executive Board of the European Association of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology (EAPB) since December 2003. He also co-authored the APV PharmaReflexions series with the published books “Starting a Business in the Live Sciences”, “Pulmonary Drug Delivery”, and “Protein Pharmaceuticals – Analytics, Formulation and Delivery” (www.ecv.de).
Contact:
Dr. Roland Schucht, CEO T: +49 (0)531 6181-5080, E: info@inscreenex.com InSCREENeX GmbH, Inhoffenstraße 7, 38124 Braunschweig, Germany
About InSCREENeX
InSCREENeX GmbH was founded in December 2009 as a spin-off of the Helmholtz-Centre for Infection Research (HZI). The company develops and commercializes highly innovative cellular screening technologies that can significantly speed up the time- and cost-intensive process of biopharmaceutical drug discovery and validation. Two complementary technology platforms have already been established: SCREENflex™ and CI-SCREEN™. While the first one allows the fast and flexible generation of stable cell lines for primary screening, the second one enables the customized design of physiologically relevant cell types for secondary screening and ADME/TOX profiling.
The company obtained seed funding from the Helmholtz Association and the HZI from the Helmholtz Enterprise Fund, together with a grant under the HEFplus programme.
