Dr Cyrus Mozayeni, Chair of the Board
Cyrus is Chief Executive Officer of Pheon Therapeutics, a leading Antibody-Drug Conjugate (ADC) specialist biotech developing next generation ADCs for a wide range of hard-to-treat cancers.
Cyrus has over 20 years of experience in the biotechnology industry and a strong history of driving strategic business growth. As an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Atlas Venture, he launched Vedere Bio and served as President & CEO from inception through to its sale to Novartis. Before joining Atlas Venture, Cyrus was co-founder of CODA Biotherapeutics, and Oncorus, where he served as President and CBO. He also served as VP and Global Head of Business Development and Alliance Management at Nasdaq listed Bluebird Bio, where his efforts led to a clinical-stage CAR T-cell program (ABECMA®, idecabtagene vicleucel) in collaboration with Celgene, and a successful IPO.
A qualified Doctor of Medicine, Cyrus is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Medicine and holds both an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management of Northwestern University and an Sc.B. in Neuroscience from Brown University.
Dr Christian Jung
Christian is a Partner at SV Health Investors, investing out of the Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF). He currently represents the fund on the Boards of Amphista Therapeutics, Harness Therapeutics and LoQus23 Therapeutics.
Prior to DDF, Christian was a Principal at Wellington Partners Life Sciences. Before joining Wellington, Christian was a Senior Investment Manager with High-Tech Gründerfonds, Europe’s leading seed fund. There, Christian completed and led the investments in nine seed- and early-stage companies, including Amal Therapeutics SA (acquired by Boehringer Ingelheim), Cunesoft (acquired by Phlexglobla) and Rigontec GmbH (acquired by MSD).
During the course of his PhD, Christian was supporting the Life Science Team of Atlas Venture in Munich. Christian has a PhD with distinction in Medical Science and Technology and an MSc degree in Molecular Biotechnology, both from the Technical University of Munich.
Dr Rogier Rooswinkel
Rogier is a General Partner at the Naarden office and joined Forbion in 2013.
Rogier is responsible for the evaluation and structuring of new investment opportunities across all disease areas with an emphasis on oncology. He was among others closely involved in the investments in Rigontec, Replimune, Enterprise, KaNDy and the setting up of the university spin-out Catalym. He currently serves as a board member for Amphista, Catalym, and Tessellate and as a board observer for Enterprise and Escalier.
Rogier joined Forbion in 2013. Prior to joining Forbion, Rogier worked as a post-doc at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI), division of immunology. During his studies, Rogier was active as an independent website designer and founded an IT-company.
In 2013 he received his PhD degree Cum Laude from the University of Amsterdam for the work he performed at the NKI. Before that, he received a Master’s degree in Oncology at the VU University of Amsterdam
Dr Florian Muellershausen
Florian is a Managing Director at the Novartis Venture Fund in Basel, Switzerland.
Prior to joining the Novartis Venture Fund, he worked as a Scientific Manager for the R&D Committee of the Novartis Board of Directors, and before that held various scientific and drug discovery roles at the Novartis Institute of Biomedical Research (NIBR) including as Laboratory Head in target discovery and in early clinical research as Translational Medicine Expert, Autoimmunity.
Florian received his MSc degree in Biochemistry from the Free University Berlin and his PhD degree with great distinction in Biochemistry from Ruhr University Bochum and completed his post-doctoral training at NIBR in Switzerland.
Dr Melanie Ivarsson OBE
Melanie is the Chief Development Officer at Moderna, based in Cambridge USA.
Melanie is a highly experienced leader with more than 20 years of experience at Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Shire and Takeda, working across all phases of clinical drug development. In her current role, Melanie oversees the delivery of all Clinical Development programs across Moderna’s portfolio.
After receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Bristol in the UK, Melanie completed postdoctoral research at Lund University, Sweden and New York University, USA. Melanie also holds an Executive MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management. Melanie was awarded an OBE in the 2022 New Year’s Honours List for Services to Public Health.
Dr David Reynolds
David is a highly experienced pharmaceutical R&D leader. He has nearly 20 years’ experience at Merck Sharp & Dohme, Lundbeck and latterly Pfizer, where he was the Cambridge Neuroscience & Pain research site head.
He has held a variety of R&D leadership roles ranging from exploratory biology, through drug discovery, early clinical development and in-licensing in multiple disease areas, with a focus on neuroscience and pain. Before joining the Dementia Discovery Fund in 2019 he spent three years as the Chief Scientific Officer of Alzheimer’s Research UK, Europe’s largest dementia research charity. In parallel to creating LoQus23 with Caroline Benn, David also co-founded and led AstronauTx, a therapeutics biotech focussed on disrupted physiology to treat neurodegenerative diseases. He has raised nearly £60M and has licensed several programmes into the AstronauTx portfolio.
David holds a PhD on models of Huntington’s Disease from the University of Cambridge, UK.
