Vaxinano - Life Sciences Board & SAB Executive Search

About Vaxinano

Vaxinano is a French biotechnology company developing a new generation of vaccines that are more efficient and faster to deploy, to prevent or treat infectious diseases.

Its vaccine platform is based on Stellar-NP technology, which confers a highly stable, adjuvant-free vaccine for an effective and long-lasting response against the most difficult pathogens, such as parasites, viruses, bacteria and fungi.

Reason and Purpose

Drawing on more than 30 years of industrial and academic expertise in vaccines and nanoparticles (NPs) from Professor Didier Betbeder, Vaxinano has developed unique mucosal immunotherapy and vaccine platforms designed to protect against infection and transmission.

Through numerous collaborations and publications in Europe and South America, the platform has been applied to a wide variety of animals, including primates and pets, demonstrating excellent safety and efficacy profiles.

Search Process and Methodology

Compass Carter Osborne’s Life Sciences practice Director, Chris Coe, worked directly with CEO Jonathan Stauber and key investor Nicolas Roberti (TheClubDeal) to define an initial need for a Non-Executive Director for the company’s key companion health business. The vision then expanded to include the potential for the platform to be used for human vaccines, alongside high-level strategic scientific advice.

Determining the correct specification for the board function required detailed commercial insight for companion health and, latterly, scientific, clinical and development exposure to guide the human programmes.

Given the narrow parameters of the brief, the executive search strategy needed to be global in nature. The breadth of Chris’ network brought forward candidates from the US, Europe and Asia. Additional scientific input identified through mapping also led to the identification of a potential Head of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB).

Outcome

CCO placed three senior appointments to strengthen Vaxinano’s board and scientific advisory capabilities:

Joachim Hasenmaier, Board Director. Former Head of Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health, Joachim brings strategic and commercial expertise to support the development and commercialisation of Vaxinano’s companion health pipeline.

Kenny Simmen, Board Director. A former Johnson & Johnson vaccine leader, Kenny provides extensive human vaccine expertise to support Vaxinano’s vaccine pipeline strategy.

Emilio Emini, Head of Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). Emilio brings extensive vaccine R&D experience to strengthen Vaxinano’s scientific vision and development strategy.

Meet the Life Sciences executive search contact

Chris Coe, Director, Life Sciences Practice

Chris is a Director in the Life Sciences Practice at Compass Carter Osborne (CCO), with more than two-and-a-half decades of experience delivering executive appointments into the global life sciences industry.

His background ranges from early-stage venture capital-backed life science start-ups through to global private equity-backed pharmaceutical and medtech companies. This extensive network of industry leaders has been strengthened by his depth of partnership within the corporate pharmaceutical, medtech and life science tools arena.

Email: [email protected]  |  Telephone: +44 (0) 208 036 6530