Apeiron Biologics makes high level changes to management and supervisory board. Meanwhile, there are changes at Relief Therapeutics. Sit back, put your feet up, and enjoy BioProcess Insider’s Ins & outs.

Up first in this week’s Ins & Outs is Apeiron Biologics, a biotech firm that develops immunotherapies for respiratory diseases and cancer.

According to the company, it is expanding its management board and supervisory board to meet the firm’s growth requirements.

Image: iStock/tomertu

Romana Gugenberger has been appointed as chief medical and scientific officer effective 1 June 2021.

Gugenbeger has been with Apeiron for twelve years and previously served as head of R&D leading clinical and non-clinical developments.

Additionally, Andreas Gerber will leave his role as site head and executive director biologics and vaccines formulation at Merck Sharpe & Dohme, to fulfil the role of chief operating officer at Apeiron.

In his previous role, Gerber managed a production plant for biologics in Kundl, Austria and lead the development of different pharmaceutical ingredients and their manufacturing at Novartis.

That’s not the only move for the firm, founder of Apeiron’s supervisory board Josef Penninger will move to the recently formed scientific advisory board.

Penninger will lead as chairman and be responsible to build the board up.

“To further strengthen the scientific acumen of the company, an advisory board will be established that will be composed of high caliber global experts from different areas of biopharmaceutical research and development,” Penninger said.

“As chairman of the scientific advisory board, I will work with the panel to provide our combined scientific expertise and development experience.”

Relief Therapeutics

Secondly, we have Relief Therapeutics a biopharma firm that is shifting its strategy from a clinical-stage company to a varied product-driven entity.

To stay in line with the strategic transition the firm has created the position of chief operating officer and selected Taneli Jouhikainen to serve in this role.

Jouhikainen has over 25 years of experience in the life sciences industry. In this new venture, he will be responsible for all internal product development and property activities, the integration of different activities and programs, and as contributing to the company’s overall growth strategy.

“I am excited to welcome Taneli to the Relief team as we take major steps to broaden our business, including diversifying our portfolio with new programs in clinical development as well as on the market,” said Raghuram (Ram) Selvaraju, chairman of the board of Relief.

He continued: “He has strong experience in pharmaceutical industry leadership and product commercialization and combines strategic thinking with the ability to effectively execute business plans. He is a strong addition to our management team.”

We hope you enjoyed this week’s Ins & Outs feature and we’re already excited to have you back for next time!