Who we are

Álvaro Aranguren has more than 15 years of research experience Including multiple collaborations with different laboratories. Álvaro graduated in Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Navarra and holds a Master’s degree in Human Genetics and a PhD in Biomedicine from the University of Barcelona. During his scientific career he has gained significant experience in bone metabolism disorders, breast and lung cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, and immunosuppression. He holds a patent for new immunosuppressive molecules. Prior to joining AELIX Therapeutics, he obtained a Master’s in Clinical Trials and Medical Affairs from CESIF/University CEU San Pablo.

Álvaro is currently a CMC Project Manager at AELIX Therapeutics and also support the Clinical Operations group.

Isabel Leal has extensive experience within the pharmaceutical Industry.  After finishing her degree in Chemistry at Alcalá University she moved to Dublin-Ireland to join Organon where she worked on pre-release pharmaceutical product analysis. She then returned to academia in Granada where she completed  a PhD focused on the preclinical development of new drugs for malaria. This was followed by post-doctoral studies at the Vall d´Hebron hospital in Barcelona where she explored HCV drug development for patients co-infected with HIV. Since 2006 Dr. Leal has worked in clinical research for several CROs as a project manager for programs run by both MSD and Amgen. She has significant therapeutic area exposure in Infectious Diseases, Women´s Health, Oncology, Cardiology, and Neurology. Since 2019, Dr. Leal has been working for Aelix Therapeutics on their HIV therapeutic vaccine program.

Ian McGowan is an academic pharmaceutical executive with extensive global preclinical, clinical, and regulatory drug development experience in oncology, gastroenterology, HIV infection, and vaccines. He has held previous industry positions with GSK, London, UK, Gilead Sciences, Foster City, CA, USA, and most recently Orion Biotechnology, Ottawa, Canada as Chief Medical Officer where he directs a portfolio of preclinical and clinical drug development research focused on oncology, neuroinflammation, and HIV prevention. He is also the Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of ABIVAX, a French biotechnology company developing novel therapeutics for infectious and inflammatory diseases. From 2007 until 2018 he was a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and remains an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at the University. Dr. McGowan has served as a consultant for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and was a former Chair of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Antiviral Drug Advisory Committee.

Jordi Armengol has over seven years of scientific research experience and over nine years of pharmaceutical industry experience in management roles covering most stages of drug development. Prior to joining AELIX Therapeutics as a Project Manager, he was a Project Manager at Spherium Biomed, focusing on CMC and Non-Clinical Development up to clinical proof-of-concept studies of different early-stage projects in the several fields, including inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, skin diseases, neuropathic pain and cardiology. He was also the Innovation Manager in charge of global scouting for new technologies in the academic and hospital environment. Previously he was responsible for the in vitro ADME unit within the pharmacokinetic department at Ferrer Group Research and Development Centre involved specially in narcolepsy and sleep regulation disorders.

Jordi graduated in Biochemistry and in Biology and holds a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Barcelona, Spain.

Silvia brings more than 20 years of finance and tax experience, gained in the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industry, among other sectors.
Silvia started her career at PricewaterhouseCoopers as tax and financial consultant. After more than 10 years in consulting, she moved to industry, managing finance departments. She specialises in setting up and consolidating teams, giving a global overview of the business to make companies more efficient.
Silvia joined AELIX in October 2019. Previously, she served as Finance Director at Sanifit, contributing to the early stages of company development. Prior to Sanifit, Silvia worked in the API division at Teva Pharmaceuticals, where she led multicultural financial teams in several TAPI commercial offices around the world, contributing to business growth and the development of sales activities.

Silvia has a degree in Business Administration from the University of Barcelona, plus specific training in accounting, tax and IT, and a postgraduate degree in implementing ERP systems.

Marc Mansour brings over 18 years of scientific research and biotech business experience. Prior to joining AELIX as Business Development Consultant, he was Chief Scientific Officer then Chief Executive Officer at Immunovaccine, Inc., a publicly traded Canadian company focused on developing cancer immunotherapies and infectious disease vaccines, where he developed and established the company’s clinical programs and strategic clinical collaborations. Dr Mansour is also Chief Science Officer/ Chief Business Officer at Vaximm, a private company focused on therapeutic cancer vaccines. Dr. Mansour has a PhD in biology from Dalhousie University and an MBA from the Sobey School of Business.

Margarida Garcia has over 20 years of experience in several Project Management and Clinical Operations roles. Her experience covers clinical trial operations from Phase 1 to Phase 4 across a broad range of therapeutic areas including HIV, Oncology, Allergy-related diseases, Neurology Cardiology, Respiratory and Urology. Ms. Garcia started working as Project Manager in 1996 at the Institute of Public Health of Catalonia with an appointment at Merck Sharp & Dohme in patients with HIV. Afterwards, Ms. Garcia served as Project Manager at various CROs (BIOMETRICA and ADKNOMA Health Research) and prior to joining AELIX Therapeutics, she served at MEDSIR Science and at LIM Global where she worked on programs sponsored by F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Johnson & Johnson’s, Novartis and Pfizer.

Ms. Garcia obtained her Degree in Health Sciences at the University of Barcelona (Spain) and at the University of Wales (UK), and holds a Masters in Pharmaceutical Industry from the Department of Medicine at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain).

Dr. Hecht has been the Executive Chairman of Aelix’s Board of Directors since 2017. He is Head of Hecht Healthcare Consulting in Küssnacht, Switzerland, a biopharmaceutical consulting company founded in 2002. Dr. Hecht also serves as member of the board of directors of BioInvent International AB, and as chairman of the board of directors of Affimed GmbH and Orion Biotechnology Canada, Ltd.

Until the beginning of March 2015, he served as Chairman of the Supervisory Council of SuppreMol GmbH. Dr. Hecht was previously Vice President Marketing at Amgen Europe. A seasoned manager and industry professional, he held various positions of increasing responsibility in clinical development, medical affairs and marketing at Amgen between 1989 and 2002. Prior to joining the biopharmaceutical industry, he was certified in internal medicine and served as Co-Head of the Program for Bone Marrow Transplantation at the University of Freiburg, Germany.

Vesna is Administration Manager at AELIX Therapeutics. She has long experience in working for biotech startups. She holds a degree in Economics by University of Zagreb, postgraduating studies in Business Communication and Human Resources Management by BEEI-Cambridge University affiliated center and a master degree in Financial Audit by the Pompeu Fabra University.

Jordi Naval is an experienced international biotech CEO (+20 years), with a track record in early-stage development, fundraising and deal-making. Aelix co-Founder and member of the BoD as Executive Director.

Christian Brander graduated from the University of Bern in 1994 with a PhD in Immunology studying exogenous antigen re-presentation on HLA class I and T-cell hyper-reactivity to Penicillin. He then spent 13 years at Harvard University focusing on cellular immunity to viral infections and the impact that host genetics have on this immune response. He joined ICREA in 2008 with an appointment at IrsiCaixa Research Institute to continue his work on host genetics and the cellular immunity to viral infections, including HIV, HCV and herpesviruses such as KSHV and EBV.

He also serves as a curator of the Los Alamos HIV Immunology database and as the scientific director of the HIVACAT program, the Catalan project for the development of effective preventive and therapeutic HIV vaccines, which unites 60 investigators at two HIV research centers in Barcelona, Irsicaixa and Hospital Clinic. He holds Associate Professor positions at the University of Vic and Central Catalonia and at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Dr. Bonaventura Clotet was Head of the HIV Unit of the Hospital Germans Trias between 1987 and 2015, when he became Head of the Infectious Diseases Department. He is also Director of the Retrovirology Laboratory “IrsiCaixa” Foundation, since 1995, and President of the “Lluita contra la SIDA” Foundation since 1992. Since 2006, he is co-director of the HIVACAT project for the development of the AIDS vaccine in Catalonia, Spain.

He is associated professor of Medicine at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), and Professor of the “Chair of AIDS and related diseases” at the University of VIC (UVic-UCC).
Dr. Clotet’s team is composed by 112 people working at the clinics and at the lab focusing on HIV, hepatitis, immune system and cancer, papiloma virus, metagenomics, other infectious diseases and aging.

Dr. Clotet has created 2 spin-offs from IrsiCaixa:AELIX Therapeutics for the development of a therapeutic vaccine for HIV infected patients and AlbaJuna Therapeutics for the development of an Immunoglobulin for curing & preventing HIV.

Dr. Philippe Monteyne MD, PhD is a Partner at the VC Fund+ in Belgium. Dr. Monteyne has held senior positions in SmithKline Beecham, GSK, and Sanofi. He served as the Head of Global Vaccine Development at GSK for several years, and then served as Senior VP-Head of Development and CMO at GSK Rare Diseases from 2010 to 2012.

More recently, he served as Vice President R&D France at SANOFI. He is a Director of different Biotech companies. Dr. Monteyne was also visiting Professor of Neurology at the UCL (Université Catholique de Louvain), Brussels. Dr. Monteyne holds an M.D. degree in 1989 and Ph.D. in Viral Immunology in 1995, both at the UCL, and has also been trained in Pasteur Institute in Paris.

Pablo graduated in Chemistry from the University of Buenos Aires and holds a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Barcelona. From 2005 to 2009, he was a postdoctoral Fulbright Fellow at the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard University. In 2009, he joined the Botín Foundation in Madrid as Senior Innovation & Technology Transfer Manager, responsible for identifying new business opportunities, managing the IP portfolio and defining business strategies to bring academic and public-based research ideas to market. From 2013 until 2018 he was the director of the Technology and Business Development Office at the Center for Genome Regulation (Barcelona) where his main role consisted of defining the innovation and commercialization strategy for the institute research output and channeling CRG´s discoveries to market. In September 2018 he joined the Caixa Capital Risc group as Principal where he played a role in identifying business opportunities, provided support and managed Caixa Capital Risc companies in the portfolio. On July 1^st 2019, Pablo was promoted to Director of the Life Science Invest Funds. He focuses on investment in therapeutics and medical devices and he currently serves on the Board of Directors at Medlumics, Aelix Therapeutics, Minoryx Therapeutics, iProteos, Proteodesign and Laboratoris Sanifit. Pablo has more than 12 years of experience in business development, technology transfer and in early stage investment.

Jeanne Bolger, MB BCh BAO, Vice President, Venture Investments, joined Johnson & Johnson Innovation - JJDC, Inc. (JJDC) in 2013. She is based in London, UK.

Dr. Bolger has over 25 years of pharmaceutical industry experience in management roles across R&D, Commercial and Business Development (BD). She spent 11 years in Licensing and Acquisition (L&A), most recently as Global Head of Scientific Licensing for Johnson & Johnson’s Pharmaceutical business, having joined Johnson & Johnson in 2005 from the Business Development group at GlaxoSmithKline.

In 2009, Dr. Bolger became Vice President, Alliance Management at Janssen Alzheimer Immunotherapy, working with Pfizer and Elan.

In 2012, upon the establishment of the Innovation Centers, Dr Bolger joined J&J’s corporate venture fund, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC. She is based in London with responsibility for investments across Europe in start-up and early stage life science companies in areas of strategic interest to J&J’s business sectors in Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology, Medical Devices and Consumer.

Dr. Bolger received her medical degree from University College Dublin. She also holds diplomas in Child Health (NUI) and in Finance and Accounting (ACCA). She is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Ireland (RAMI). Dr. Bolger has served as the sole pharma industry representative on two Irish government taskforces seeking to enhance the commercialization of IP from Irish academic centres. She is a visiting lecturer on the MSc Pharmaceutical Medicine curriculum at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.

Dr. Karen Wagner is a General Partner at Ysios Capital where she focuses on therapeutic investments. Dr. Wagner currently serves on the boards of AELIX Therapeutics, Vivet Therapeutics, Xeltis and Minoryx Therapeutics.  Dr. Wagner holds a master’s degree in Molecular Biology and a PhD in Cell Biology, both from the University of Konstanz, Germany.

Dr. Wagner has over 15 years of experience in business development and financing in the biotech/pharma sector working for companies such as F. Hoffmann-La Roche and GlycArt. Previously she was a Consultant in McKinsey & Company’s Global Healthcare Practice.