Nijmegen, the Netherlands, November 19, 2012 - Xenikos BV (“Xenikos’), a biotech start-up engaged in the development of its proprietary T-Guard compound, an antibody-based ‘immune resetting tool’ with therapeutic potential in transplantation and autoimmune diseases, announces the establishment of its Supervisory Board. The Board will play a key role in guiding the company in the registration of T-Guard as an Orphan Drug for treating acute Graft-versus-Host Disease, and further exploring T-Guard’s potential use in the field of solid-organ rejection and selected autoimmune diseases.
Supervisory Board chaired by Jaap Kampinga, MD, PhD.
The Supervisory Board is chaired by Jaap Kampinga, a medical doctor, academic scientist, and serial biotech entrepreneur. Since 2003, Jaap Kampinga is a partner and Managing Director of Oakes, Lyman & Co. Ltd (London, UK), a small, FSA-regulated company that takes on the role of a serial entrepreneur by originating, building, organizing finance and attracting experienced management for European medical businesses that have the potential to serve large unmet medical needs in high-value global markets. Jaap Kampinga is a non-executive director of CellCoTec Ltd. (Bilthoven, Netherlands) and ActiveSignal Holding Ltd. (Abergele, UK), both portfolio companies of Oakes, Lyman & Co. Ltd, and is CEO and executive director of ActinoPharma Ltd. (London, UK), one of their other portfolio companies. ActinoPharma is developing a novel oral therapy based on heat-killed Actinomycetales bacteria for the treatment of a number of chronic inflammation diseases (CID), including asthma.
Jaap Kampinga obtained his medical and scientific training at the University of Groningen (Netherlands), at which he specialized in experimental microsurgery and immunology. From 1989 to 1999 he held several management positions at Quadrant Healthcare Plc., including Research & Development. As R&D Director, he managed Quadrant’s novel drug delivery and stabilization R&D activities and led the company’s external drug discovery program. He helped define the company’s strategy in drug inhalation, and was involved in most commercial activities. Quadrant floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1998 and was acquired by Elan Pharmaceuticals in 2000. Dr. Kampinga was an executive and board director and a key member of the team that promoted the initial public offering. In 1999, he founded and headed JARI Pharmaceuticals BV (Utrecht, The Netherlands), a company focused on the discovery and development of drugs for severe inflammatory conditions. From 2003 to 2007, he was interim CEO of PhotoBioChem NV (Leiden, Netherlands), a portfolio company of Oakes, Lyman & Co. Ltd. focused on the development of a photosensitizer system for blood sterilization, age-related macular degeneration and certain forms of cancer.
The two other distinguished members appointed to the Xenikos Board are:
Theo Buunen, PhD, who recently retired in 2012 from his position as CEO of Sanquin in Amsterdam. Sanquin, an organisation with 3,000 employees, collects blood in the Netherlands, and produces and distributes blood products and plasma products in the Netherlands and abroad. Sanquin is the result of the merger in 1997 of 22 independent blood banks and the CLB, a national plasma fractionator. In his 12 years as CEO, he reorganised the blood banking business of Sanquin from 22 separate centers into a single national blood bank with increased efficiency and quality of products. Through internationalisation of the plasma fractionation he accomplished a significant growth in sales with the acquisition of Belgian and Finnish organisations, and by introducing Dutch plasma products to several international markets, including the US. Theo Buunen obtained his PhD in acoustics in 1976 at the University of Delft, and worked there as a scientist until 1979. He did a post doc in Madison Wisconsin from 1976-1977, and obtained an MBA at the University of Twente (Netherlands) in 1982. In 1983 he started as research manager at CLB in Amsterdam, and by 1997 he was CLB’s CFO and responsible for the plasma fractionation. He is currently on the board of several Dutch organisations in a non-executive capacity. He is chairman of the board of CAF/DCF, a Belgian fractionator in Brussels belonging to the Sanquin group, and is an executive board member of an international fractionators organisation.
Henrik Luessen, PhD. Henrik Luessen founded his business advisory firm Tytonis BV (www.tytonis.com) in 2006. Previously he was CBO of OctoPlus (www.octoplus.nl), before its public offering. There he commercially developed OctoPlus from a group of 12 employees with a core expertise in pharmaceutical
development services of biopharmaceutical compounds, to an organization of about 140 people with two of its own products in clinical development. From 1996 to 1998 he was Manager of Corporate Development at LTS LOHMANN Therapie Systeme GmbH. At LTS he was involved in corporate strategy and licensing, and was responsible for setting up the business development in Asia and Australia, as well as the business development in the field of new platform technologies worldwide.
ñ He is CBO of the cell-based drug screening company InScreenex (www.inscreenex.com) and was until 2011 interim CBO of the pulmonary delivery company Activaero GmbH (www.activaero.com).
ñ In 2009 he co-founded the affiliated company Tytonis Operations GmbH (www.tytonis-operations.com) in Dresden (Germany).
ñ He structured the business plan of Sterna Biologicals GmbH (www.sterna-biologicals.com), which was awarded 2nd place in the German business plan competition, Science4Life.
ñ He obtained his Ph.D. at the Leiden/Amsterdam Center of Drug Research in Pharmaceutical Technology, funded by the German National Scholarship Foundation. He is the author or co-author of more than 30 international publications and patent applications in the field of drug delivery and biopharmaceutics. He graduated as a Pharmacist at University of Hamburg (Germany) and later also received his certification as a Dutch Pharmacist.
ñ He is the editor of the recently published books: “Starting a Business in the Life-Sciences: From Idea to Market” (2002), “Pulmonary Drug Delivery” (2007), and “Protein Pharmaceuticals – Formulation Analytics and Delivery” (2010) (www.ecv.de). He headed the subject group ‘Pharmaceutical Biotechnology’ at the APV (International Association of Pharmaceutical Technology, Germany) for 6 years until 2011. In December 2003 he was appointed as Governor of the Executive Board of the European Association of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology (EAPB), and is a member of the CRS and AAPS.
“We are very pleased with the appointment of such seasoned and accomplished members to our Board of Directors, and look very much forward to working with this experienced team in helping the company to further develop T-Guard as a registered Orphan Drug for the treatment of life-threatening GVHD, and exploring its use in alternative indications which might benefit from ‘resetting’ of the immune system”, said Ypke van Oosterhout, CEO of Xenikos.
Contact:
Ypke van Oosterhout, PhD
CEO
Xenikos B.V.
T: +31 24 300 01 00
E: y.vanoosterhout@xenikos.com
