About us background shapes
About us

We specialize in evolution inspired medicine for inherited and orphan diseases

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Our focus

Scenic Biotech is focused on identifying genetic modifiers for therapeutic intervention.

Also known as disease suppressors, genetic modifiers are genes that re-balance or completely block the effect of a disease-causing mutated gene.

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History

The Company was founded in 2017 as a spin-out of the Netherlands Cancer Institute and Oxford University.

Through its proprietary Cell-Seq platform technology, Scenic has built a strong intellectual property portfolio covering its therapeutic targets and its chemistry.

We are led by an ambitious team with entrepreneurial thinking, and recognized leaders supporting our therapeutic programs.

Leadership team

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Oscar Izeboud, PhD

CEO & Executive Director

20+ years of experience in biotech, including 14 years in investment banking at Kempen & Co and NIBC, leading over 50 IPO’s and M&A transactions across Europe and the USA.

Oscar joined Scenic in 2020 as CEO and is also a Board Director.

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Jens Würthner, MD, PhD

CMO

20+ years of clinical development experience from research institutions as well as big pharma and biotech companies including Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, and most recently

ADC Therapeutics. Jens joined Scenic in 2022 as Chief Medical Officer.

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Margot Hoppe

VP Legal

30+ years of experience in (corporate) legal affairs, having worked for various biotechnology and life sciences companies including Kiadis Pharma, Gist-Brocades and Royal DSM.

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Kristof Van Emelen, PhD

VP Drug Discovery

25+ years of drug discovery and early-stage development experience (corporate)with  various biotech and established pharmaceutical companies including Ermium Therapeutics, and Johnson & Johnson.

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Annette Galler, PhD

VP Portfolio Strategy

20 years of experience in pharmaceutical industry and biotech encompassing successful global drug development, marketing and launch at e.g., Merck KGaA, Wyeth Pharma and Boehringer Ingelheim.

Annette started at Scenic Biotech in May 2022 and joined the Leadership Team as VP Portfolio Strategy in May 2023.

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Carola Jongerius

Head people & culture

25+ experience in Human Resources and coaching. First 15 years in corporate companies such as Andersen, Deloitte and as a consultant with the Human Capital group. The last 10 years specialized

in supporting start up and scale ups to professionalize the Human Resource function. Carola joined Scenic in 2019 as head of People and Culture.

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Board of Directors

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Philippe Dro

Chairman of the Board

Philippe has fulfilled leading roles in multiple biotech and medtech companies, including Themis Bioscience (acquired by Merck), GlycoVaxyn (acquired by GSK), Endoart (acquired by Allergan) and Axovan (acquired by Actelion).

Philippe serves on the Board of Luciole.

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Oscar Izeboud, PhD

CEO & Executive Director

20+ years of experience in biotech, including 14 years in investment banking at Kempen & Co and NIBC, leading over 50 IPO’s and M&A transactions across Europe and the USA.

Oscar joined Scenic in 2020 as CEO and is also a Board Director.

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Alexandra Glucksmann, PhD

Independent Non-executive Director

Alexandra is President & CEO of Sensorium Therapeutics. Prior to that, she fulfilled multiple leadership roles including, Founding COO at Editas Medicine, VP at Millenium Pharmaceuticals, SVP at Cerulean Pharma, and most recently President & CEO of Cedilla Therapeutics.

She also serves on the board of RegenxBio.

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Edward van Wezel

Non-executive Director

Edward is Founder and Managing Partner at BioGeneration Ventures (BGV) and combines over 20 years of experience in venture capital, pharma licensing, drug development and translational research.

He was founding investor and board member of Acerta Pharma (acquired by Astra Zeneca for $7B) and currently serves on the boards of several BGV portfolio companies.

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Simone Botti, PhD

Non-Executive Director

Simone is a Partner at Inkef and brings with him 20 years of experience across venture capital and startup creation. Before joining INKEF Simone was CEO of Metabomed, a cancer metabolism company he co-founded while he was Head of the Israel Bioincubator Fund at M Ventures.

Simone accumulated his company building experience while at M Ventures, where he established and led several healthcare startups. During that time Simone also served as a Board Member of IATI, the Israel Advanced Technology Industries association. Previously, he was Vice President Business Development at RAD Biomed Accelerator, one of Israel’s leading life science incubators. Simone did his PhD in Structural Biology and Neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute of Science, where he received the “Dov Elad” prize in Structural Biology.

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Stéphane Verdood

Non-executive Director

Stéphane Verdood has an MBA and a Master’s degree in commercial engineering from the Catholic University of Leuven. Stéphane is a recognized venture capitalist. 

He started his career with Arthur Andersen as information technology auditor. After having led the mergers and acquisitions division of Arthur Andersen in Belgium from 1989 to 1995, he founded and led Arthur Andersen’s business consulting division in Belgium and Luxembourg. He served on the European Board of Partners of Arthur Andersen. Since October 2000, before he joined Vesalius Biocapital, Stéphane has been active as a venture coach for early-stage companies. He was a founder and managing partner at Value4Growth, a specialized Life Science consulting firm supporting start-up companies in all aspects of company formation, product strategy and fund raising.Stéphane is a founding partner of Vesalius Biocapital Funds specialized in venture capital for European biotechnology companies. Since 2007 Vesalius has invested in more than 20 biotech companies. During his career he has worked in the US, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, the UK and Portugal. Fund raising to set up Fund I in 2007 and Fund II in 2011.

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Michael Wacker

Non-executive Director

Michael is an experienced life science entrepreneur and General Partner at BioMedPartners. Michael serves on the board of directors of various portfolio companies.

In addition, he coaches start-ups in Switzerland for Innosuisse, the governmental commission of technology and innovation. Before joining BioMedPartners, Michael was founder and CSO of GlycoVaxyn (acquired by GSK) and chairman of Inositec (acquired by Vifor).

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Stephan Christgau, PhD

Non-executive Director

Stephan is founding partner of the Nordic Life Science Venture fund, Eir Ventures. Prior to launching Eir Ventures, Stephan was part of setting up Novo Seeds, the early stage company creation and investment arm of Novo Holdings.

During his 12 years at Novo Seeds, he led creation and funding of more than 25 companies in Europe, with a particular focus on Scandinavia. Stephan has extensive operational experience from management and research scientist roles in European and US Biotech and holds a PhD in Protein Chemistry and immunology from UCSF.​

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Prof. Thijn Brummelkamp

Founder & Board Observer

20+ year career in award-winning Genomics research. Group leader at The Netherlands Cancer Institute and former Fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge USA.

Co-founder of Haplogen, Haplogen Genomics and Scenic Biotech. Thijn is also part of Scenic's Scientific Advisory Board.

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Nick Dixon-Clegg

Board Observer

Nick serves on the board of Scenic as an Observer, representing investor Oxford Science Enterprises, where he is a Partner. He brings experience from a career spent in investing and corporate finance.

Nick  joined Oxford Sciences Enterprises from Valiance, a MedTech-focused venture capital firm. He was previously an investor at large cap buyout private equity firm Nordic Capital. Prior to that he began his career as an investment banker at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

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Scientific Advisory Board

Stephen is a visionary leader in Genetics, Cancer, and Digital Health. He is recognized for cloning the first human cancer susceptibility gene and for proposing the utility of synthetic lethality for cancer therapy.

He co-founded and led Rosetta Impharmatics (acquired by Merck) to pioneer mRNA expression profiling for cancer. He was at Apple from 2014-2017 to work on digital health, he is now a co-founder and President of 4YouandMe, the Founder and Chairman of Sage Bionetworks, and is a Visiting Professor of Connected Medicine at the University of Oxford.

Chas is Pro-Vice Chancellor for Innovation and Professor of Translational Medicine at the University of Oxford.

He is Director of the Centre for Medicines Discovery in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine and Associate Member of the Department of Pharmacology. Chas is an invited expert on several government and charitable research funding bodies, and an advisor for many academic, biotech and pharma drug discovery programmes.

Ton is a world-leading expert in Immuno Oncology. He is a senior member at The Netherlands Cancer Institute and professor of Immunotechnology at Leiden University.

He is a founder of AIMM Therapeutics, T cell factory (acquired by Kite Pharma/Gilead), Neon Therapeutics (acquired by BioNTech), and Neogene. He is also a Third Rock Venture partner. His long list of awards include, The Amsterdam Inventor Award, Queen Wilhelmina Cancer Research Award, Meyenburg Cancer Research Award, William B. Coley Award and the Jeantet-Collen prize.

20+ year career in award-winning Genomics research. Group leader at The Netherlands Cancer Institute and former Fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge USA.

Co-founder of Haplogen, Haplogen Genomics and Scenic Biotech. Thijn is also a Scenic Board Observer.

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