Patrick Dunne
Chair Boardelta, EY Foundation, ESSA, Visiting Professor Cranfield

Experienced Chair with extensive experience of working with boards in Europe, Asia and North America. Currently Chair of board consultancy Boardelta, the charities The EY Foundation and ESSA- Education Sub Saharan Africa as well as Chair of the oversight board for the Chartered Management Consultant and trustee of the Chartered Management Institute.

Executive experience with Air Products and 3i Group plc where he was Communications Director, a member of its Operating committee and Chairman of its Operational Risk forum.

Author of the award winning “Boards” and three other successful books on the subject and was member of the Higgs Review.

He also has extensive experience of developing social enterprises, most notably with Leap Confronting Conflict where he is Patron and was Chairman, from 2006 to 2015, with ESSA, the EY Foundation and with Warwick in Africa which he founded in 2006. Warwick in Africa has now benefitted over 750,000 young Africans with transformed Maths and English teaching. 
 

 

Anne Portwich PhD
Partner LSP

Anne Portwich, PhD, is a Partner of LSP, an independent European investment firm, providing financing for private and public life sciences and healthcare companies. With over €2 billion under management and offices in Amsterdam, Munich and Boston, LSP is one of Europe’s leading life sciences investor. Anne currently serves on the supervisory boards of iSTAR Medical, OneProjects, Atlantic Therapeutics, MedEye, ViCentra and Vivasure Medical. Previous board positions include Sapiens Steering Brain Stimulation (acquired by Medtronic in 2014), ActoGeniX (acquired by Intrexon in 2015), Nexstim (IPO in 2014) and Neuravi (acquired by Codman Neuro in 2017). Prior to joining LSP, Anne was a scientist and project leader at OctoPlus, a Dutch company offering advanced research services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. She obtained an MSc in biochemistry from the University of Hanover and received her PhD from the Max Planck-Society.

Bart Bergstein
Chairman of the Board Lead Pharma (a.o.)

Bart started his career at ABN AMRO Bank, transitioning from general finance to Private Equity in 1997.  After a few years in the buy-out practice he founded the Life Sciences Department and headed this department till the team spun out in 2006 forming Forbion Capital Partners.  In 2014 after successfully raising and investing two funds of in total over EUR 350m, Bart took the role of CFO in one of the portfolio companies, Cellnovo Inc in Wales.  He successfully arranged an IPO at Euronext Paris raising over EUR 31m. Since 2016 Bart is active as an independent advisor to Life Sciences companies, often in the role of non-executive board member. Currently he holds four non-executive positions, two of them as chairman. Furthermore, Bart is Vice Chairman of the board of the Mibiton Foundation and is strategic advisor to Wageningen BioVeterinary Research.

Axel Mescheder, M.D.
CEO Cristal Therapeutics

Axel Mescheder is a board-certified M.D. from the University of Kiel (Germany) with a 
medical license and full medical specialization in Pharmacology and Toxicology.
He worked as a clinician and clinical investigator in the departments of Internal Medicine 
and Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacology. He has more than 25 years of professional experience in drug development serving international biopharmaceutical companies with a focus on clinical development and regulatory affairs.

He gained broad professional and academic experience in global drug development with a therapeutic focus on oncology, immunology, infectious diseases and other relevant medical areas at major international pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies (Hoffmann-La Roche, Centeon (now CSL Behring), Genetics Institute (now Pfizer), MorphoSys, Medigene, Topotarget (now Onxeo), Cristal Therapeutics and within the CRO industry (Medpace) in a variety of functions of increasing seniority including Chief Executive, Medical and Development Officer.
As the CEO he has demonstrated his ability to lead and structure a SME by defining and driving the company’s financial, commercial and development strategy including implementation of strategic and industrial best practices and operational excellence within a small entity and tight budgets.
He implemented and executed successfully early to late stage clinical development 
programs with a track record of advancing compounds (Roferon A®, Neumega™, InductOs®, Tygacil®, Eligard®, Oracea®, Veregen/Polyphenon®, Beleodaq®) through the various clinical phases leading to product registration or label extensions, both in Europe and the US.

He was responsible and contributed to medical and scientific meetings with the FDA, EMA and national European agencies. He is experienced in organizing and chairing international conferences and investigator/KOL meetings and served on scientific and drug safety 
boards. He is member of leading international medical associations, including ASCO, ESMO, ESCMID, DGPharMed/ IFAPP. He served as President of the DGPharMed for 6 years and supports BioM/Martinsried as a mentor for biotech start-up companies. He is author/ co-author of peer-reviewed publications and presented at international medical and business conferences.