ADVISORY BOARD

Dr. Hellmut Kirchner, Board Member and Founder

Dr. Kirchner is a senior advisor at Sal. Oppenheim Private Equity Partners GmbH. He has more than 25 years of experience in venture capital and private equity. As early as 1983, he co-founded Techno Venture Management (TVM), the first German venture capital fund. Later, Dr. Kirchner co-founded VCM Capital Management in Munich, where he managed more than one billion Euro. Dr. Kirchner studied law and business administration in Munich and Lausanne and holds a doctorate of law.

Dr. Axel Ullrich, Board Member and Founder

Dr. Ullrich is Director of the Department of Molecular Biology at the Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried. He is one of the leading cancer researchers and among the 10 most cited scientists over the past 30 years worldwide. In the mid eighties at Genentech, Dr. Ullrich initiated the HER2 project and developed the monoclonal antibody that led to Herceptin^® which was approved by the FDA as the first gene discovery-based target-specific cancer therapeutic for the treatment of metastatic mammary carcinoma. The second cancer drug resulting from Dr. Ullrich's research is Pfizer's SUTENT^®, a multi-targeted kinase inhibitor, which was recently approved for the treatment of gastro-intestinal stromal tumors and renal cell carcinoma (view press release). Dr. Ullrich is co-founder of the biotech companies SUGEN, Axxima Pharmaceuticals and U3 Pharma.

Dr. Jürgen Schumacher, Board Member

Jürgen Schumacher is an internationally recognized German entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of Qiagen and principal founder of NewLab Bioquality, which he sold to Charles River Laboratories International in 2008. Besides being involved in several industry associations and other organizations, Schumacher is an experienced business angel who holds management and board positions in a number of biotechnology companies.