CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD

Dr. Kirschbaum is a board member of several biotech companies and has 20 years of experience in R&D of global international pharma companies at Hoechst Maron Roussel, Aventis, Sanofi-Aventis, and Merck Serono, and was in his last position Executive Vice President, Global Research & Early Development and member of the board at Merck Serono.

At Merck Serono, Dr. Kirschbaum was instrumental in building the R&D portfolio up to proof-of-concept in humans with more than 70 programs including avelumab (Bavencio®). He has worked in different technology areas (from small molecules to biologics) in a broad range of disease areas including rheumatology/immunology, thrombosis, cardiometabolic diseases, oncology, neurology and rare diseases. His experience also covers several osteoarthritis programs including MMP inhibitors, an ICE inhibitor, a locally administered Bradykinin B2 receptor antagonist and FGF-18. Dr. Kirschbaum is also member of the board of Amarna Therapeutics, a company developing SV40-based gene therapy for gene replacement and tolerance induction.

Dr. Kirschbaum holds master and PhD degrees in biochemistry from the University of Konstanz, Germany.