Nuevolution Appoints Ton Berkien As Chief Business Officer
12/9/2013 9:49:42 AM
Copenhagen, Denmark, December 9, 2013 / B3C newswire / – Nuevolution A/S, a leading small molecule lead discovery company, today announced that Ton Berkien will join the company on January 1, 2014 as Chief Business Officer. In his role, Mr. Berkien will lead Nuevolutions commercial and business development efforts and as member of Executive Management, he will play a key part in the strategy planning going forward. His most recent position was at Takeda/Nycomed, where he was acting Head of Corporate Development/M&A.
In 2012, Nuevolution announced a new financing round of € 11 Million to catalyze the establishing of an internal pipeline of drug candidates addressing therapeutically important targets within Oncology and Inflammation. During the last 12 months, Nuevolution has applied its efficient and validated lead discovery technology and has identified small molecule compounds for the first 10 internal target programs and has progressed two of these into lead optimization.
"The appointment of Ton has been made at a strategically important point in time for Nuevolution. During 2014, Nuevolution will be in a position to out-license its first internal programs and further programs will rapidly follow." said Alex Gouliaev, CEO of Nuevolution A/S. "We are very pleased that Ton has accepted to join us and look forward to benefit from his expertise in the commercialization of Nuevolutions internal programs."
"I am very pleased to join Nuevolution at such an exciting time for the company. Together with the strong management team, I look forward to contribute to the company's accelerated growth by driving the commercial efforts forward", says Ton Berkien.
Most recently, Mr. Berkien served as Senior Director Corporate Development at Takeda Pharmaceuticals International GmbH, Switzerland, where he was responsible for several M&A transactions in the US, and Europe as well as in various Emerging Growth Markets like China, Brazil and Colombia. Prior to Takeda, he held a similar position at Nycomed Pharmaceuticals. During 2003-2007, Mr. Berkien was Director of Competitive Intelligence at Ferring Pharmaceuticals, where he was responsible CI project management in both the R&D and commercial organisation.. Earlier, Mr. Berkien held Senior Manager positions at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Rijnconsult, KPMG and Gilde Investment Management. Mr. Berkien has a BA degree in Economics from the Saxion University of Applied Science in Holland, and an LSid from Harvard Business School/IMD/PwC.
About Nuevolution
Nuevolution is a leading small molecule lead discovery company founded in 2001 and based in Copenhagen, Denmark. The company has developed Chemetics®, a unique, patent protected hybrid of proven wet chemistry and molecular biology which represents the ultimate fragment based drug discovery technology. Chemetics® enables rapid oligonucleotide e.g. DNA encoded synthesis of up to billions of chemically diverse drug-like small molecule compounds and the efficient screening of these, facilitating the identification of potent drug leads at unprecedented speed and scale.
Nuevolution partners its technology with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Nuevolution has entered into agreements with Merck & Co., Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis Pharma and Boehringer Ingelheim, where Lexicon Pharmaceuticals and GlaxoSmithKline have entered into licensing agreements with Nuevolution. In a 4 million budgeted project supported by the Danish Advanced Technology Fund, Nuevolution has initiated hit-to-lead optimization efforts. Nuevolution has also entered a scientific collaboration by and between Duke University, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Lexicon Pharmaceuticals and Nuevolution. Most recently, Nuevolution announced a joint venture with Cancer Research Technology (CRT), the commercial arm of Cancer Research UK.
Nuevolution has demonstrated the power of Chemetics® by identification of highly potent and drug like novel ligands with the potential to address major unmet medical needs across a range of therapeutic areas and target classes. Nuevolutions internal programs are focused on therapeutically important targets within inflammation and oncology.
Nuevolution is a privately owned company by key Scandinavian investors, including SEB Venture Capital, Sunstone Capital, Industrifonden, SLS Invest, Novo Ventures and Innoventus Life Sciences.
Chemetics® is a registered trademark of Nuevolution.
Chemetics® is a patented technology of Nuevolution: EP1402024, US7,727,713, EP1487978, US7,413,854, EP1756277, EP1608748, US 7,915,201, EP1558744, AU2003273792, CN-ZL20038010476, HKHK1082742, IN213390, IL167531, JP4895608, ZA2005/02624, NZ538993, SG111515, US8,206,901, US7,704,925, EP1957644. EP07114663.3, EP10184311.8, US12/330,709, EP08169346.7, US12/179,323, EP03766117.0, US10/523,006, US10/539,288, US13/179,283, EP09154197.9, AU2011226815, CA2,544,153, CN201210222023.8, EP10183942.1, EP10184069.2, HK11107861.8, HK11107866.3, IL207672, IL207673, IN178/MUMNP/2007, JP2010-226107, JP2013-155967, US11/402,957, US13/455,223, US10/572,644, EP10192716.8, EP10192717.6, US12/095,778, EP09765460.2, US12/999,267, EP11720372.9, IN9924/DELNP/2012, US13/641,588.
For further enquiries about Nuevolution please contact:
Nuevolution A/S
Alex Haahr Gouliaev, CEO
Phone: +45 7020 0987