Board of Directors

Dr. Thomas Meier

Executive Chairman

Dr. Thomas Meier is a dynamic life sciences entrepreneur who established Santhera Pharmaceuticals (SIX Exchange: SANN) as a successful Biotech/Specialty Pharma company in Switzerland. In the past 20 years he held executive positions (CSO and CEO) and successfully supported or executed mergers, acquisitions, product licensing and turn-around situations. Since 2017 he is member of Santhera’s Board of Directors. He holds a PhD in Biology from the University of Basel and carried out post-doctoral training at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center (USA) and Biozentrum, University of Basel, where he became group leader and lecturer in neurosciences before joining the industry. He is an internationally recognized scientists with track record in clinical research of orphan diseases (neuromuscular, neuro-ophthalmology). In 2007, he received the BioValley Basel Award for his outstanding contributions to the life sciences in the area.

Mark Altmeyer

Executive Board Member

Education:
MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business; BA in economics from Middlebury College.

Mark Altmeyer is a highly experienced pharmaceutical executive and can look back on significant successes in various leadership roles with senior strategic, operational and commercial responsibilities. Prior to joining Novaremed, he was founder, President and Chief Executive Officer at Arvelle Therapeutics, where he led the organization through the approval of its lead product by EMA and the company’s efforts to prepare for the European launch until its acquisition by Angelini Pharma for approximately USD 1 billion. Prior to that, Mark served as President and Chief Commercial Officer at Axovant Sciences (NASDAQ: AXGT), where he led the establishment of global commercial capabilities and pre-launch preparations for various pipeline products. Previously, Mark served as President and CEO at Otsuka America Pharmaceutical Inc., transforming the company into a successful commercial organization and doubling total revenues to nearly USD 5 billion over five years. Earlier in his career, Mark held senior commercial and general management positions at Bristol-Myers Squibb and Cetus Corporation.

Dr. Isaac Kobrin

Executive Board Member

Dr. Kobrin is an internist with 15 years of experience in academic medicine both in Israel and the USA. In 1989, Dr. Kobrin joined Hoffmann-La Roche as International Clinical Leader and later on became Global Group Leader of the Cardiovascular Development Group. In 1999, Dr. Kobrin joined Actelion Pharmaceuticals as Senior Vice President, Head of Clinical Development, and member of Actelion’s Executive Committee. In 2009, he became Chief Medical Officer and chairman of the Strategic and Portfolio Board of Actelion. Since 2012, Dr. Kobrin is serving on the Board of Directors of several Swiss biotechnology companies.

Andrew J. Oakley

Executive Board Member

Andrew J. Oakley is an experienced pharmaceutical and biotech industry professional and currently serves as Chief Financial Officer of privately held Theolytics Ltd. Previously, he held CFO positions at listed pharmaceutical companies Autolus Therapeutics plc (NASDAQ: AUTL), Sosei Group (TSE:4565), Vectura Group plc (LSE: VEC) and Actelion Ltd, where he led the finance function for over a decade. Before joining Actelion, he held senior finance positions for Accenture as well as executive positions in major multinational building material companies. Mr. Oakley holds a Bachelor of Economics Degree from Macquarie University and an MBA from London Business School and has been a Member of the Australian Institute of Chartered Accountants since 1987.

Dr. Eli Kaplan

 

Dr. Kaplan founded Novaremed in 2008. Prior to founding Novaremed, Dr. Kaplan practiced medicine in Switzerland. He has more than 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry particularly in oncology drug development. He worked at Farmitalia Carlo Erba in Italy (Milan) as a Director of Oncology-Corporate Medical Department, in Germany (Freiburg) as a Medical Director as well as in Israel. In addition, between 1994 and 1998, he founded a consulting firm, Seneb-Pharma, to consult in the field of Research and Development of Drugs and Medical Products. Between 2005 and 2006 he was as a (part time) Medical Director at Oridion BreathID in Israel. Dr. Kaplan has a medical degree from the University of Bologna, Italy.

Dr. Joseph Feinstein

 

Dr Joseph Feinstein is an Israeli physician who is a specialist of Ear Nose and Throat (ENT) since 1983. Dr Feinstein is the founder, chairman and owner of Neve Shalev old age home in Israel since 1982. Dr Feinstein is a co-founder of Novaremed Ltd. and he is currently a Board member of the Israeli Subsidiary.

Limor Kohen

 

Limor Kohen has been the CEO of Gefen BioMed Investments since 2013 and she is serving on the Board of directors of several companies as Gefen representative. Prior to her current position, Mrs Kohen was active in the Capital Market and served as VP of marketing and sales, VP of Business Development and Marketing and Director of several companies in Israel. She holds a BA degree in Business Administration, Finance and Marketing from the Tel Aviv college of Management, Israel.

Dr. S K Tan

 

Dr. Tan currently practices in Singapore, having graduated from medical school in 1971. He has postgraduate qualifications in Dermatology and Venereology, and Cosmetic Science, and an MBA from the Maastricht Business School, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Dermatology (FAAD). He is a founder-partner of the JYSK Group (Singapore) and is an investor and Board member of several biotechnology companies, including Illustris Pharmaceuticals (USA) and Novaremed (Switzerland).

Scientific Advisory Board

Prof. Dan Ziegler

Prof. Dan Ziegler graduated from Heidelberg Medical School, Germany. He holds specializations in Internal Medicine, in Diabetology and in Endocrinology. He is currently Deputy director, Research Group Leader, Professor of Internal Medicine and Consultant Physician at the Institute for Clinical Diabetology, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany. In addition, Prof. Ziegler is a member of multiple authorized expert panels for clinical guidelines; he has chaired and he is now executive committee member the of Diabetic Neuropathy Study Group of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) editorial boards and Prof. Ziegler has published more than 300 original articles, reviews, and book chapters. He is a reviewer and member of editorial boards for many journals, including N Engl J Med, Lancet, Lancet Endocrinol Diabetes, J Am Coll Cardiol, Diabetes, Diabetes Care, Diabetologia, J Clin Endocrinol Metab, Ann Neurol, JAMA Neurol, Pain and Journal of Diabetes Research. He has received multiple awards, including the Camillo Golgi prize of the of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD). His areas of interest are: pathophysiology, pathology, diagnosis, screening, prevention, and treatment of diabetic polyneuropathy, neuropathic pain, cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy, gastrointestinal motility, and erectile dysfunction; design of clinical trials. He has been principal investigator of numerous clinical trials in diabetic neuropathy for more than 30 years.

Prof. Nadine Attal

Prof. Attal is Associate Professor of therapeutics and pain in University Versailles Saint Quentin (France) and responsible for the Center of Evaluation and Treatment of Pain in Ambroise Paré Hospital (France). Prof. Attal has published 129 peer review papers on pain particularly neuropathic pain since 1988 in high impact factor journals such as Lancet Neurol, Annals Neurol, Neurology, Brain, Pain. Since 2004, she coordinated several European guidelines (EFNS, EAN) on the assessment, pharmacological and neurostimulation treatment of neuropathic pain. Since 2016, she is responsible for the panel Pain of the European Academy of Neurology. She was at the Editorial board of the Journal Pain from 2004 to 2008, field editor of the Journal E J Pain and section editor of the Journal Pain Reports (France), member of the IASP Council since June 2018 and of the French Society of Pain Council since 2016. She is also Chair of the pain panel of the European Academy of Neurology.

Prof. Elon Eisenberg

Prof. Elon Eisenberg graduated from Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University in Israel. He completed a residency in Neurology, at Rambam Medical Center, Haifa, Israel, and Neurology – Pain Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA. Prof. Eisenberg has been the director of the Institute of Pain Medicine at Rambam Health Care Campus, Haifa, Israel, and the President of the Israeli Pain Association. He is currently the director of the Pain Research Unit at the Institute of Pain Medicine, Rambam Health Care Campus. He is a Professor of Neurology and Pain Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine and holds the Otto Barth Family Academic Chair in Biomedical Science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. His main areas of research include mechanisms and treatment of pain with special emphasis on neuropathic pain, CRPS, cancer pain, opioids and cannabinoids. Prof. Eisenberg has published about two-hundred articles, book chapters and abstracts in various areas of pain.

Prof. Robert H. Dworkin

Dr. Dworkin received his BA from the University of Pennsylvania and his PhD from Harvard University. He is Professor of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, Neurology, and Psychiatry, Professor in the Center for Health + Technology, and Director of the Anesthesiology Clinical Research Center at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. He is Director of the Analgesic, Anesthetic, and Addiction Clinical Trial Translations, Innovations, Opportunities, and Networks (ACTTION), a public-private partnership with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and a Special Government Employee of the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. He previously served as a consultant to and member of the FDA Anesthetic and Life Support Drugs Advisory Committee and as a member of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Herpes Zoster Working Group. He is an Associate Editor of Pain, and a member of the Editorial Boards of Journal of Pain, Canadian Journal of Pain, and Current Pain and Headache Reports. He received the American Pain Society’s Wilbert E. Fordyce Clinical Investigator Award in 2005 and John and Emma Bonica Public Service Award in 2014, the Eastern Pain Association’s John J. Bonica Award in 2011 and Raymond Houde Lectureship Award in 2018, the American Academy of Neurology’s Mitchell B. Max Award for Neuropathic Pain in 2015, and the American Academy of Pain Medicine’s Founders Award in 2018. His major research interests are (1) methodologic aspects of analgesic clinical trials and (2) treatment and prevention of chronic and acute neuropathic and musculoskeletal pain. The primary focus of his current research involves the identification of factors that increase the assay sensitivity of clinical trials to detect differences between an active and a control or comparison treatment.

Dr. Doriano Fabbro, PhD

Dr. Fabbro has a PhD in Biology and has 25 years of experience in drug discovery in Pharma (Ciba-Geigy, Novartis) as well as Biotech (Piqur Therapeutics), following 10 years in academia. Until 2005, he was Executive Director for the Oncology Drug Discovery effort at the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research (NIBR) and member of the NIBR Oncology Advisory Board overseeing significant part of NIBR’s global Oncology Drug Discovery portfolio from target discovery to clinical development. From 2005 to 2012, he was Executive Director of the NIBR Expertise Platform Kinases dedicated to global Kinase Drug Discovery projects in Oncology, Immunology, Inflammation, Respiratory Disease, Muscular Disease and Cardiovascular indications. Since 2012 he is Chief Scientific Officer of Piqur Therapeutics (Basel Switzerland), a small biotech company devoted to the discovery of PI3K/mTOR inhibitors as well as scientific advisor for several pharmaceutical companies in the area of kinase drug discovery. During his career, he contributed to the development of the following approved oncology drugs such as Glivec® (Imatinib, BcrABL inhibitor), Tasigna® (Nilotinib, BcrAbl inhibitor), Afinitor® (Everolimus, mTOR inhibitor) and Ryadpt® (Midostaurin, Kit and Flt-3 inhibitor).

Prof. Michael Salter

Michael Salter is a Senior Scientist and Chief of Research Emeritus at The Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute and a Professor in the Department of Physiology at the University of Toronto. He received his MD at the University of Western Ontario and his PhD from McGill University. Dr. Salter is determining fundamental molecular and cellular mechanisms of normal and pathological neuroplasticity. His discoveries have broad implications for the control of cell-cell communication throughout the nervous system and his work has regularly appeared in elite journals including Nature, Science, Cell, Nature Medicine and Neuron. He is using his discoveries to design and test new types of treatment for individual suffering from a variety of disorders of the CNS. He is developing molecules that target major cell signalling pathways in neurons and in glial cells involved in pain, stroke, neurodegenerative diseases and schizophrenia. He has won numerous awards for his work, including an International Research Scholarship from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.