Management Team
Bart Wuurman
Bart is a biotech CEO with over 30 years’ experience in innovative drug development, biotech financing, business development and licensing. He has experience in working with research and development based companies in pharmaceutical product development in several therapeutic areas, including cancer, inflammatory diseases and cardiovascular diseases.
He has been instrumental to successful biotech company exits in the UK and in the Netherlands. He was responsible for pharma licensing deals worth over $700 million.
Bart was CEO of De Novo pharmaceuticals (UK), AM-Pharma, Lanthio Pharma and Lyramid (Australia) and is Director of Hercules Pharmaceuticals.
Before joining Apaxen, Bart was also Managing Director of DDF Ventures, a life-science focused venture fund with a portfolio of start-up companies in The Netherlands.
Mathilde Metna
Mathilde has more than 10 years of experience in R&D, both in academic and industrial environments.
Before joining Apaxen, Mathilde performed lead selection and PoC efficacy studies on new chemical entities currently at clinical stages. She managed ADMET, IND-enabling preclinical studies and prepared regulatory submissions to the FDA and EMA.
Neurobiologist by background, she focused on the understanding of cannabinoid receptors physiology in the brain at the INSERM Neurocentre Magendie (Bordeaux, France).
Her research works have led to more than a dozen publications and she is co-inventor and co-author of several patent applications. As one of the first employees, she was instrumental to the success of Aelis Farma.
Olivier Favre-Bulle
Olivier has 20 years experience working in the life sciences industry, firstly as a researcher and later as a business leader.
He began his career at Rhône-Poulenc, before moving to Covance, and later to Novo Nordisk. He has set up and developed several biotechnology companies and is founder and director of 3BioTech, a pre-clinical and clinical trial service provider.
As a researcher and developer, he has over 20 patents bearing his name and has won the Rhône-Poulenc research prize. He has directed several international industrial development projects from inception in the laboratory through to cGMP production.
He holds a degree in chemical engineering, supplemented by a PhD in molecular and cell biology from the University of Groningen (the Netherlands). He has also received a MBA from SIMI (Denmark).
Yannick Pletan
Yannick is a Board-certified pulmonologist and immunologist from the University of Paris with a Master Degree in Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacokinetics, who started his career in various university hospitals, as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Respiratory Medicine, then Head of a Respiratory Medicine Department, with a fellow-researcher position at INSERM.
He joined the pharmaceutical industry at Sanofi as Head of Global Immunology R&D, then moved to Pierre Fabre Research Institute as Chief Medical Officer, Global Head of Clinical Development and of R&D Strategy.
He then worked for Pfizer as VP-Head of the Medical & Scientific Division, Member of the Executive Committee, and up until 2016 as Country Medical Director of Roche in France as well as a Member of the Global Medical Affairs Council of Hoffmann-Laroche in Basel. During his years in the Pharma industry, he was personally involved in the successful development, registration and launch of 5 out of the 10 best-selling drugs worldwide. Yannick joined Apaxen as Chief Medical Officer in 2021.
Tim Bourne
Tim is an experienced CSO, with a deep understanding of immunology and inflammation. He has 25 years of experience in drug development working on a range of small molecule and antibody therapeutics that are now marketed or in clinical development. An immunologist by training, he was Senior Director Celltech/UCB, responsible for many aspects of anti-inflammatory drug development, where he gained experience with the progression of projects from inception to clinical development. As such he contributed to the successful BLA submission for anti-TNF drug Cimzia. Before working with Apaxen Tim held CSO roles at Step Pharma and Sitryx, where he was instrumental to a $60m licensing deal with Lilly. Most recently, he has worked as a consultant, supporting several start-ups and biotech companies.