Julian has more than 30 years of commercial and technical experience in the pharmaceutical industry gained at a number of companies including Chiroscience, Mundipharma, BTG and GSK. Most recently, Julian was co-founder and CEO of Acacia Pharma Group, a hospital pharmaceutical company, raising c.£100m in private and public funding to develop and commercialise BARHEMSYS®. Prior to this, he was co-founder and Commercial Director of Arakis Ltd, a specialist pharmaceutical company, that was sold to Sosei in 2005 having licensed Seebri®/Ultibro® to Novartis. Julian has a degree in pharmacy and a PhD in pharmaceutics, both from the University of Nottingham and is currently the Chairman and Non-Executive Director of Exvastat, and a Non-Executive Director of Nuformix and Monument Therapeutics.
Robert is Professor and Chair of the Department of Applied Stem Cell Technologies of the University of Twente and Professor at the Department of Anatomy and Embryology of the Leiden University Medical Center. His research group focuses on cardiac disease modelling based on human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC). He has extensive experience on cardiotoxicity and cardiac disease using hPSC-derived cardiomyocytes. Besides, Robert is leading the research theme “heart disease” of the Institute for Human Organ and Disease Model Technologies (hDMT).
Johan Sebregts is co-founder and managing partner of the early stage investment funds KIKK Capital and the Zeeland Investment fund. Before that, he was founder and director of the start-up program Starterslift. Johan is also non-executive director of the biotech companies Toxys and Pepscope.
Jaap is Investment Manager, leading BGV’s Fonds Investerings Rijpe Starters (FIRST) fund. He joins BGV from Utrecht Health Seed Fund where he was Fund Manager with oversight for a series of successful investments in health and life sciences companies such as TargED Biopharmaceuticals, NTrans Technologies and Moveshelf. Prior to this, Jaap was an Investment Manager and Senior Business Developer at Utrecht Holdings where he led a number of investments, including the investment in Quantib, which was successfully sold to RadNet, Inc. He directed over 15 intellectual property tech license deals including the MR-STAT technology to Philips Healthcare. Prior to this, Jaap held several roles at Philips Healthcare’s Image Guided Therapy business and corporate incubator. Jaap holds a master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from Delft University of Technology.
Ian joined Libertatis Ergo Holding as investment manager following 5 years of business development with LURIS, the technology transfer office of the University of Leiden and Leiden University Medical Center. He obtained a PhD in Cancer Biology at Vanderbilt University before beginning a 10-year career in cell therapy, first with Seattle-based BioLife Solutions where as Director of Technology Business Development he enabled innovative product offerings for blood banking as a new market segment and added to the patent portfolio. He then spent the next 8 years in cell therapy manufacturing, first at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, where he managed the R&D and production of expanded cord blood-derived stem and progenitor cells for hematopoietic transplantation that ultimately led to incorporation of NOHLA Therapeutics, before moving to The Netherlands and heading manufacturing of Kiadis Pharma’s ATIR101 for haploidentical stem cell transplantation.