Board of Directors
Pheon’s Directors have diverse and complementary backgrounds with deep scientific and commercial expertise and a strong track-record in the ADC industry.
Jeff Albers
Chairman
Jeff Albers has more than 25 years’ experience working in the biopharmaceutical industry, contributing to bringing new medicines to patients with cancer and rare diseases. He is currently Chairman at Blueprint Medicines, where he previously held the position of Chief Executive Officer from 2014 to 2022. As CEO at Blueprint Medicines, a research-stage company, he led the company through an Initial Public Offering (IPO) and helped the company evolve into a leading precision medicine company with a global, fully integrated business, including two FDA-approved therapies and a rapidly advancing pipeline. Jeff is currently on the board of directors of Kymera Therapeutics and Magenta Therapeutics and serves on the board of advisors for Life Sciences Cares.
During his career, Jeff has also served as President of Algeta, where he oversaw the successful commercial launch of a targeted cancer therapy prior to the company’s acquisition by Bayer. Prior to Algeta, Jeff held senior commercial and corporate development positions at Genzyme (now a division of Sanofi), including Vice President of the U.S. hematology and oncology business unit. Earlier in his career, Jeff was a life sciences corporate attorney at Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky & Popeo. He holds a B.S. from Indiana University and an MBA and J.D. from Georgetown University.
Jonathan Tobin
Partner at Brandon Capital
Jonathan is a Partner at Brandon Capital, based in London. Prior to joining Brandon, Jonathan was a Managing Director at Arix Bioscience, a UK and US-based biotech venture firm, where he sat on several boards including: Artios Pharma, Atox Bio, Depixus, STipe Therapeutics, and VelosBio (acquired by Merck in 2020 for $2.75 billion). Prior to working at Arix, Jonathan spent five years at UK early-stage venture capital firm Touchstone Innovations as a Principal in the Healthcare Ventures team. Jonathan has a degree in Biology from the University of Oxford (St Anne’s College); a PhD in in genetic diseases from UCL; carried out postdoctoral research on cancer cell signalling at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute (now Crick Institute), and an MBA from Imperial College.
Shaun A. Kirkpatrick
President, Biotechnologies
Shaun A. Kirkpatrick is President, Biotechnologies of Research Corporation Technologies (RCT) in Tucson, Arizona, and serves on the company’s Board of Directors. Shaun oversees RCT’s investment portfolio and technology development and licensing activities in therapeutics, life science tools and diagnostics.
RCT’s investment and technology portfolio includes numerous venture-backed companies, including DisperSol Technologies, LLC, Particle Dynamics, LLC, and Translational Drug Development, LLC and some of today’s landmark platforms and pharmaceuticals including the anticancer drugs cisplatin and carboplatin, the PSA blood test for prostate cancer, the technetium-99-based imaging agents, the Pichia protein expression system, the anticonvulsant drug Vimpat®, and the shingles vaccine Shingrix®.
Shaun received a Master’s degree in international economics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a Bachelor’s degree in economics and ecology/evolutionary biology from the University of Arizona. In addition, Shaun also serves on the boards of several companies in RCT’s venture investment portfolio and is also a board member of the Flinn Foundation in Phoenix, AZ and the Critical Path Institute in Tucson, AZ.
Michael Gladstone
Partner at Atlas Venture
Michael Gladstone is a partner at Atlas Venture, where he builds and invests in innovative therapeutics companies. Michael is a board member of Day One Biopharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: DAWN), Third Harmonic Bio (NASDAQ: THRD), and Versanis Bio. Michael has also served as a board observer for Akero (NASDAQ: AKRO), Delinia (acquired by Celgene), IFM Therapeutics (acquired by BMS; and its spinout IFM Tre acquired by Novartis), Replimune (NASDAQ: REPL), and Q32 Bio. Prior to joining Atlas in 2012, Michael worked at L.E.K. Consulting and previously, he conducted HIV vaccine research in the Viral Pathogenesis department of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He received an AB in biochemical sciences from Harvard College.
Roger Rooswinkel, PhD
General Partner at Forbion
Rogier is responsible for evaluation and structuring of new investment opportunities across all disease areas with an emphasis on oncology. He was among others closely involved in the investments in Rigontec, Replimune, Enterprise, KaNDy and setting up of the university spin-out Catalym. He currently serves as a board member for Amphista, Catalym, and Tessellate and as a board observer for Enterprise, Prilenia, and Escalier. Previously, Rogier was a board director of Achilles ($ACHL) and an observer at Replimune ($REPL).
Rogier joined Forbion in 2013. Prior to joining Forbion, Rogier worked as a post-doc at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI), division of immunology. During his studies, Rogier was active as an independent website designer and founded an IT-company.
In 2013 he received his PhD degree Cum Laude from the University of Amsterdam for the work he performed at the NKI. Before that, he received a Master’s degree in Oncology at the VU university of Amsterdam.
Bertrand Damour
Chief Executive Officer of Pheon Therapeutics
Bertrand Damour has 20 years’ management experience in the biotech industry in Europe and US as CEO of biotech companies and in the banking industry. He was previously CEO of NBE-Therapeutics, the developer of NBE-002, an anti-ROR1 Antibody-Drug Conjugate (ADC). Boehringer Ingelheim acquired NBE-Therapeutics in early 2020 for US$1.4 billion. Earlier in his career, he was CEO of GeneProt Inc., a US proteomics company; Mind NRG, a Swiss biotech in the field of CNS (which was acquired by Minerva Neurosciences (NASDAQ: NERV); OncoEthix, a Swiss based oncology company in the field of epigenetics, (which was acquired by Merck & Co. (NYSE: MRK) for US$375 million; and more recently at Synthena AG, a company developing Oligonucleotide based therapeutics for the treatment of genetic neuro muscular diseases. Bertrand has extensive expertise in corporate transactions, including M&A, LBOs and IPOs which he gained while working in the banking industry at J.P. Morgan, Rabobank International and Deutsche Bank in New York and London.
