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A new Class of Immunotherapeutic Drugs

Orion Biotechnology is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing best-in-class immunotherapeutics based on novel recombinant chemokine analogs.   Our goal is to significantly improve the health outcomes of populations affected by serious diseases in the area of oncology, neuroinflammatory disorders, inflammatory bowel disease, HIV, and others.  By utilizing our proprietary Drug Discovery Platform we will be able to accelerate the identification and lead optimization of chemokine analogs and other small proteins.   Our first biologic – OB-002 – is being targeted at critical unmet needs with indications in Oncology, Multiple Sclerosis and is currently in clinical trials for HIV prevention.

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Leadership Team

It takes skills in different disciplines to successfully bring a new treatment from concept through regulatory studies to a proven market ready product. We understand that, and have built a world leading team of recognized experts in their respective fields. What makes us stronger still are the relationships that our experts continue to foster with leading research institutions and partners around the globe.

Management

Mark Groper
Anatole Klepatsky
Dr. Ian McGowan
Dr. Oliver Hartley
Dr. Bozena Korczak
John Jussup
Jason Burke
Jarret Engstrom

Board of Directors

Dr. Thomas Hecht
Rudolf Bom
Mark Groper
Anatole Klepatsky
Theresa Firestone
Dmytro Martynenko

Advisors

Sir Gregory Winter
Sir Gregory Winter FRS is Chair Orion Biotechnology’s Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Winter was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry …
>> Read More.
Dr. Robin Offord
Dr. Offord has taught and researched at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, U.K. from 1962-1980, collaborating with Nobel prize …
>> Read More.
Dr. Heinz-Josef Lenz
Heinz-Josef Lenz, M.D., FACP, is the Associate Director for Clinical Research and Co-Leader of the Gastrointestinal Cancers Program at …
>> Read More.
Dr. Andreas Harstrick

Dr. Harstrick currently serves as CMO and member of the management board for Affimed and brings extensive experience in global cancer …
>> Read More

Dr. Fred Lublin

Dr. Lublin is a Professor of Neurology and the Director of the Corinne Goldsmith Dickinson Center for MS at Mount Sinai Medical Center. …
>> Read More.

Global Headquarters

343 Preston Street

11th floor,

Ottawa, On K1S 1N4

CANADA

+1 343.291.1032

Switzerland

Campus Biotech

Innovation Park

Avenue de Sécheron 15

1202 Genève

SWITZERLAND

Poland

Orion Biotechnology

Life Science Park

UI Bobrzyńskiego 14

30-348 Krakôw

POLAND

contact us

Leave  us a message and we will try to respond by the next business day

ORION Logo Pantone(375x133)

Our Headquarters

343 Preston Street

11th floor,

Ottawa, ON K1S 1N4

CANADA

info@orionbiotechnology.com

+1 343.291.1032

Mark Groper

President and Chief Executive Officer

Mr. Groper is the Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Orion Biotechnology Board of Directors. He has more than 30 years of business and entrepreneurial experience in the Health Industry including founder and senior executive positions at both private and public sector organizations. Mr. Groper is a health industry expert with a proven track record of successfully building companies from start-up through to large scale commercial operations. He has held senior positions with Accenture, Telus Health, Emergis and DINMAR – a health care business he founded, operated, and grew to become a highly successful international business. Known as a results-oriented entrepreneur, with a demonstrated track record of success, Mr Groper provides leadership in strategic planning, and business development, while maintaining a keen focus on operational management. Mark has also built a strong reputation for innovation leadership, judgement and integrity, and understands what it takes to drive health care technologies into successful products

Anatole Klepatsky

Chief Operating Officer

Mr. Klepatsky is the Chief Operating Officer and a member of the Orion Biotechnology Board of Directors. A senior executive with over 20 years of corporate management experience, Mr. Klepatsky has established success in corporate management, operations, and international business. Prior to joining Orion Biotechnology, he was a co-founder and Managing Partner of Altius, a leading Eastern European M&A firm with strong track record in healthcare, biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. He has also served as Director of several private and public corporations in Eastern Europe and Canada. As the Chief Operating Officer at Orion, Mr. Klepatsky will lead business operations

 

Ian McGowan MD, Phd, FRCP

Chief Medical Officer

Ian McGowan is the Chief Medical Officer of Orion Biotechnology. Originally trained in medicine at the University of Liverpool, UK, Dr. McGowan also has doctoral degrees from Oxford University in mucosal immunology and Liverpool University in drug development. Prior to joining Orion Biotechnology, he was a Professor of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and has published over 150 scientific papers, review articles, and book chapters. He currently is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. McGowan has over 25 years dedicated to the development of antiretroviral drugs and vaccines for the treatment and prevention of HIV infection. He previously worked at Glaxo Wellcome on the development of amprenavir and abacavir and was also a Director of Clinical Research at Gilead Sciences Inc. where he was responsible for the Phase 2/3 development of tenofovir disoproxil fumarate for the treatment of HIV infection. As the former principle investigator of the NIH funded Microbicide Trials Network, he had responsibility for the oversight of a global program of over 40 Phase 1 through Phase 3 clinical trials. Dr. McGowan has served as a consultant for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and is a former Chair of the United States Food and Drug Administration Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee.

Oliver Hartley

Vice President, Drug Discovery

Dr. Hartley obtained his Ph.D at Cambridge, U.K., in 1997 in the group of Sir Gregory Winter. He has also researched into lysosomal storage disorders of children at the Institute of Child Health, London and in molecular biology at Glaxo-Wellcome. He has been at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, since 1997. He has been Principal Investigator under a number of competitively-won grants from agencies such as the US National Institutes of Health, the Swiss National Science Foundation and several private foundations in the US and Switzerland. He is a co-founder of the Mintaka Foundation for Medical Research (2005) and is its President and Chief Scientific Officer. He has shared a number of awards with Robin Offord in connection with their work for Mintaka. These include ‘Person of the Year 2008 – Culture’ of the ‘Tribune de Genève’; A Transitional Medicine Award of more than $4 million from the Wellcome Foundation (2010); the Jury Special Award of the Ashoka Impact Programme 2014; the “Prix de l’Innovation 2014” of CHF 10,000 from the Geneva University Hospitals and a second Translational Medicine Award of CHF ~3 million (2014)

Bozena Korczak

Chief Translational Research Officer

Bozena Korczak is Chief Translational Research Officer at Orion Biotechnology. Dr. Korczak is a translational science executive with more than 20 years of experience across multiple therapeutic areas including oncology, inflammatory diseases, dermatology, cardiology, and infectious diseases.   She has a PhD in biochemistry from the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Polish Academy of Science, Warsaw, Poland and performed pioneering post doctorate work on cloning gene coding for large receptor proteins at the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.  Dr. Korczak is the author of 35 papers published in peer reviewed international journals and inventor of 6 patents.   She has extensive senior leadership experience with biotechnology companies in the United States and Canada, including her role as Vice President, Drug Development at PolyMedix Inc., Radnor, PA, USA, where Dr. Korczak was responsible for accelerating drug development of select clinical candidates, manufacturing, bioanalytical services, and clinical operations.  Most recently Dr. Korczak was a co-founder and Vice President, Drug Development at Karunix Inc., Bryn Mawr, PA, USA, as well as co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Novalyse Biosolutions, Inc., Wayne, PA, USA.

John Jussup, BA, LLB

General COunsel and Corporate Secretary

Mr. Jussup is the General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for Orion Biotechnology. Mr Jussup brings a background of broad experience in international business, intellectual property, corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions and securities law to his role at Orion Biotechnology.  He received the Canadian General Counsel of the Year award, sponsored by The National Post and ZSA, in 2005, and holds the ICD.D designation from the Canadian Institute of Corporate Directors

With over 30 years experience in both the public markets and government sectors, he has been a corporate legal executive to leading technology companies as well as private and public sector institutions.  Mr. Jussup was Senior Vice President, Chief Legal Officer & Secretary of Cognos Inc, Canada’s largest software company from 1993 until its acquisition by IBM in 2008.  He later served as General Counsel & Secretary of the Bank of Canada from 2009 until 2012.  He served as Chair of the Board of Keek Inc from 2013 until 2016 (listed on the TSX:V) and currently sits on the advisory board of PBC Real Estate Advisors, an Ottawa-based real estate investment fund. John Jussup has been a member of the Law Society of Ontario since 1977.

Jason Burke, CA, CPA

Chief Financial Officer

Mr, Burke is the Chief Financial Officer for Orion Biotechnology.   He has over 20 years of experience providing operational and financial expertise to rapidly growing companies.  Jason has previously served as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Conversant Intellectual Property Management (formerly MOSAID).  In these roles, Mr. Burke oversaw a fundamental reorganization of the company following a $560m leverage take private transaction by Sterling Partners, out of Chicago.  Prior to Conversant, Jason served as Vice President Finance and Principal Accounting Officer of Massachusetts based AVID Technologies – a publicly traded audio and video solutions provider with $680m in annual revenues.   Jason has also served as Chief Financial Officer of IBM Software Group, Business Analytics Division (Cognos and IBM Company) where he oversaw the integration of major portions of Cognos into IBM, as part of a $5 Billion acquisition.
 
For all of his achievements, Jason was recognized by Treasury and Risk Magazine as one of the top Global 40 under 40 finance professionals in 2010.

Jarret Engstrom

Director of Clinical Operations

Mr. Engstrom is the Director of Clinical Operations at Orion Biotechnology responsible for design and implementation of the company’s early clinical development platform. Mr. Engstrom has extensive experience spanning preclinical strategy and operations, CRO/CMO oversight, translational research and FDA regulated Investigational New Drug (IND) programs. Mr. Engstrom started his career as a Clinical Research Assistant and quickly advanced through increasingly senior positions to Director of Clinical Operations. He has worked with a variety of health organizations including the University of Pittsburgh Magee Women’s Research Institute, NASORCAP Medical, and ARGEN Health. In his previous roles, Mr. Engstrom was principally responsible for operational oversight, management, and delivery of complex translational research protocols as well as managing the critical relationship between laboratories and clinical research centers. He will continue this work at Orion Biotechnology providing leadership and operational management for clinical activities, with the goal of rapidly bringing our novel technologies to market.

Thomas Hecht

Chairman of the Board

Thomas Hecht, M.D. is founder and owner of Hecht Healthcare Consulting which provides services in marketing, clinical development and M&A in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. He also serves as Executive Chairman of Vaximm AG, Chairman of Affimed NV and Aelix Therapeutics and non executive director of Cellmedica. He previously served, among others, as chairman of Esbatech AG, now a Novartis company, Suppremol GmbH (acquired by Baxalta) and as NED at Humabs AG (acquired by VIR). He spent 13 years at Amgen in Medical and Marketing positions, most recently as VP Marketing Europe H/O/NP

Prior to joining the biopharmaceutical industry, he was certified in internal medicine and served as Co-Head of the Program for Bone Marrow Transplantation at the University of Freiburg, Germany.

Rudolf Bom

Founder and Vice-Chairman of the Board

Mr. Bom is the founder and Vice-Chairman of the board of Orion Biotechnology. Working closely with the CEO, Mr. Bom brings extensive international senior management experience from 17 years with Royal Philips electronics. He served as President and CEO for Philips in Singapore, Malaysia, Canada and China. Mr. Bom has also served as Chairman of the Management Board of Hagemeyer N.V., a Netherlands-based international trading company and as Managing Director of Al-Futtaim Dubai, one of the largest industrial and trading companies in the Middle East, active primarily in the Gulf

Theresa Firestone

Board Member

Ms. Firestone joined the board of Orion Biotechnology in October of 2018, bringing with her extensive expertise in pharmaceutical and healthcare management. This has included government, retail, and various leadership roles with Pfizer inc., in Canada, Europe and Asia, with the latest being; Regional President, Asia Emerging Markets (Shanghai and HK). Theresa is currently Senior Vice-President, Health and Wellness at Shoppers Drug Mart (SDM) and is responsible for several business units including MediSystem Pharmacies, Specialty Health Network, Pharmaceutical Partnerships, Shoppers Home Healthcare /Wellwise retail stores and Medical Cannabis. Ms. Firestone was a Corporate Director for Merus Labs International (TSE: MSL) from 2014-17 and has held board positions with several not-for-profit organizations. She is currently a board member with the Canadian Association for Pharmacy Distribution Management and the University of Guelph Board of Governors. Theresa was awarded the prestigious Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002.

Dmytro Martynenko

Board Member

Mr. Dmytro Martynenko has been practicing law for almost 25-years. He is on the Board of Directors for the Kiev International Airport and is legal advisor to the president of UDP (Ukrainian Development Partners) Group – a major shareholder of the Kiev International Airport. and leading Ukraine real-estate development company. Before joining UDP Group, Dmytro worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Ukraine and Russia, and is a graduate of Kiev National University Law School. Mr. Martynenko has broad experience in raising funds on financial markets, including private placements and IPOs, and has led major corporate structuring initiatives as well as cross border transactions.

Sir Gregory Winter

Chair Scientific Advisory Board

Professor Winter was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, cited specifically “for the phage display of peptides and antibodies”, the technology that led to “Humira”, the first fully human mAb to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is now the world’s top-selling pharmaceutical drug. He founded three start-up companies to develop therapeutic drugs based on his inventions, Cambridge Antibody Technology, Domantis, and more recently Bicycle Therapeutics who are developing a new class of therapeutics based on a bicyclic peptide product platform.

 

Robin Offord

Senior Research Advisor

Dr. Offord has taught and researched at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, U.K. from 1962-1980, collaborating with, among others, the Nobel Prize winners Frederick Sanger, César Milstein, Dorothy Hodgkin and Aaron Klug. In 1980 he became a Departmental Director at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, and later served as President of the School of Basic Medicine there. Martin Rodbell (Nobel Prize 1994) was a visiting member of his group for two years in the early 1980s. Robin became an Emeritus Professor in October 2005. He was a co-founder of the Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics and is Chairman of the Advisory Board of Eclosion, Geneva’s life-sciences incubator. He served for ten years as a member of the Geneva government’s Council for Regional Economic Development. He is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies (Port St Lucie, Florida and San Diego) and is the first non-US President of the American Peptide Society. Robin Offord shared the 2002 “Man of the Year, Switzerland” award of the Swiss financial newspaper L’agefi and in 2005 received the American Peptide Society’s Makineni Award. He is a co-founder of the Mintaka Foundation for Medical Research (2005) and is its Executive Director.

Heinz-Josef Lenz

Senior Research Advisor Heinz-Josef Lenz, M.D., FACP, is the Associate Director for Clinical Research and Co-Leader of the Gastrointestinal Cancers Program at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Lenz is Professor of Medicine and Preventive Medicine, Section Head of GI Oncology in the Division of Medical Oncology and Co-Director of the Colorectal Center at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. An active researcher, Dr. Lenz focuses on topics including the regulation of gene expression involved in drug resistance, patients at high risk of developing colorectal cancer, and determination of carcinogenesis, methods of early detection, and better surveillance of these cancers. Dr. Lenz  serves as Co-Chair of the GI Committee and Correlative Science Committee for SWOG. He is a member of the NCI Task Force for Gastroesophageal Cancer, the NCI Steering Committee and the NCI Translational Science Committee. In addition to having an NCI-funded laboratory, he was a recipient of the ASCO Young Investigator Award, the ASCO Career Development Award, and the STOP Cancer Career Development Award.

Dr. Andreas Harstrick

Senior Research Advisor  

 

Dr. Harstrick currently serves as CMO and member of the management board for Affimed and brings extensive experience in global cancer drug development from his former positions as SVP Global Clinical Development Oncology at Merck-Serono, SVP Medical Sciences Imclone/Eli Lilly and CMO Molecular Partners. During his career he has led the development, clinical phase implementation, and new biological entity approvals of multiple oncological agents including Erbitux® (cetuximab), Portrazza™ (necitumumab) and Cyramza® (ramucirumab).

An oncologist by training, Dr. Harstrick spent his medical career at the University Hospital and Cancer Center Hannover, Germany; the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo NY; as well as the West German Cancer Center, Essen, Germany. He earned his MD at Medical School Hannover, Germany, and in 1999 he became Associate Professor for Internal Medicine, University of Essen, Germany

Fred Lublin

Senior Research Advisor

Fred D. Lublin, MD is the Saunders Family Professor of Neurology and the Director of the Corinne Goldsmith Dickinson Center for Multiple Sclerosis at Mount Sinai Medical Center. He is an internationally renowned authority on the scientific and clinical aspects of MS; he is also one of the foremost authorities regarding experimental therapies. Dr. Lublin is a neuroimmunologist and as such has a special interest in immune functions and abnormalities that affect the nervous system. He has been involved in both and clinical and basic science research.   Dr. Lublin was chairman of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society (USA) advisory committee on clinical trials of new MS drugs and their research programs advisory committee; and he was chair of the Clinical Advisory Committee of the New York City Chapter of the National MS Society. Dr. Lublin is a member of many professional societies and advisory boards and has served as a consultant to the NIH, as well as to pharmaceutical and biotech companies in all phases of drug development, and in preparation for drug presentation to the FDA and its advisory panels.

contact us

Leave  us a message and we will try to respond by the next business day

ORION Logo Pantone(375x133)

Our Headquarters

343 Preston Street

11th floor,

Ottawa, ON K1S 1N4

CANADA

info@orionbiotechnology.com

+1 343.291.1032