Baliopharm / Board of Directors

Dr. Andreas Herrmann

President

Andreas received his Ph.D. in 1994 in biochemistry in the field of neurobiology and worked as an associate professor in the department of cardiovascular physiology at the University of Cologne.

In 1996 Andreas was cofounder of Cardion AG (Erkrath, Germany) where he was heading the R&D department until 2003. In parallel he was heading all antibody related research activities in Cardions subsidiary Cardion INC in Boston (USA). As part of the management team he was responsible for fund raising and for the CMC and preclinical development of biopharmaceutical compounds, up to final licensing of the lead compound to Roche.

Since then Andreas has (co)founded seven biotechnology companies which he also led as CEO, including Celonic AG (service company), Baliopharm AG, Probiocon GmbH (consulting company), Synimmune GmbH (bispecific antibodies, oncology), Alvotech hf (biosimilars), Valerius Biopharma AG (specialty biosimilars) and Icelandic Natura (Topica). In 2002 Andreas took over Celonic GmbH (Germany) and re-structured the company towards a profitable contract development and manufacturing company (CDMO) with about 30 employees in Germany and 60 employees in Basel (Switzerland). In 2011 the service unit of Celonic AG was sold and the remaining part focusing on the development of therapeutic antibodies renamed to Baliopharm AG (Basel). To further support the research activities, Baliopharm GmbH was founded in Germany with operations in cell culture, process development and analytics. From 2013–2016, Andreas built up Alvotech hf, a leading biosimilars company based in Iceland with a 4-product pipeline and 14,000 sqm manufacturing plant and made 2 successful acquisitions, a license deal with a top 10 globally acting pharmaceutical company and other strategic initiatives.

Dr. Henrik Luessen

Board Member

Henrik obtained his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics from the Leiden/Amsterdam Center for Drug Research in 1996 and graduated at the University of Hamburg as Pharmacist in 1991.

In the past, Henrik was involved in the foundation to trade sale of several life science firms such as Symbiotec GmbH, Nanomi BV and Activaero GmbH. He also served as Chief Business Officer at OctoPlus NV until its initial public offering in 2006. During his time at OctoPlus, Henrik commercially developed the company from a group of 12 employees with a core expertise in pharmaceutical development services of biopharmaceutical compounds to an organization of 140 people with two proprietary products in clinical development.

During his career he has concluded around 250 IP-related, transactional and licensing deals. Henrik obtained his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics from the Leiden/Amsterdam Center for Drug Research in 1996 and graduated at the University of Hamburg as Pharmacist in 1991.

Henrik acts as Chief Business Officer at Promethera Biosciences where he is responsible for identifying and executing strategic corporate development initiatives and licensing agreements.