Newly hired executives to boost their company’s growth

Biotech startups NXI Therapeutics and Anjarium have expanded their management teams with a new Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer, respectively. Yokoy and PXL Vision have also found representatives to assume responsibility as Chief Revenue Officer. All four appointees bring a wealth of experience to take the startups through the next phase.

NXI Therapeutics, a spin-off from the Biozentrum, University of Basel, is a specialist biotech developing next-generation immunosuppressive drugs for autoimmune diseases and organ transplantation. The startup has expanded its management board with the appointment of Dr Ruben Herrendorff as its new CEO to drive the next stage of its development. Ruben was previously co-founder and CEO of Polyneuron Pharmaceuticals AG, a bluechip VC-backed biotech developing a new antigen-specific technology platform to tackle antibody-mediated autoimmune diseases. The company also announced the appointment of Dr Ulf Grawunder to its Board of Directors. Ulf is a successful serial biotech entrepreneur who has founded and exited two biotech companies since 2004: 4-Antibody (sold to US-based Agenus) and NBE-Therapeutics (sold to Boehringer Ingelheim).

Ajarium CTO Mail Anjarium
Anjarium Biosciences AG, a biotech company focused on creating and delivering a new class of non-viral gene therapies, welcomed Otmane Boussif, DSc as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Otmane brings over 25 years of experience in shaping and leading biopharmaceutical technology development, bioprocessing, manufacturing, and regulatory requirements, covering a range of biological modalities with a strong focus on advanced Cell and Gene Therapies.

Otmane joins Anjarium from the clinical-stage biotech company Sensorion, where he was CTO. Prior to that, he spent six years at Novartis in various senior roles, including Global Head of Cell & Gene Therapy Technical Development and Global Head of Early Phase Development. In these roles, Otmane established a dedicated unit to oversee all Cell and Gene Therapy modalities and was involved in numerous Investigational New Drug programs. Before Novartis, he held roles at Sanofi and EMD Serono.

Yokoy welcomes Chief Revenue officer (CRO)
Simon O’Kane is the first CRO of Yokoy, the Zurich-based startup dedicated to transforming the spend management market with its AI-based software. Simon brings extensive knowledge in accelerating cost-efficient growth while always focusing on customer centricity. Simon has more than fifteen years of experience leading and growing software as a Service business worldwide. He spent the last years at Asana, overseeing their international expansion. Before that, he was Managing Director of EMEA at the software company Qualtrics, CRO for Huddle and Managing Director, UK and Ireland and Salesforce.

PXL Vision appoints CRO
On December 1, Adrian Humbel started in the newly created position at PXL Vision as Chief Revenue Officer to steer the growth of the B2B tech scale-up providing enterprise identification solutions. With over 30 years of experience in the cybersecurity space, Humbel brings a wealth of knowledge to the team. Throughout his career, Adrian has held various leadership positions such as Country Management Novell Switzerland and VP and CTO Identity & Security for Novell EMEA. In 2007, he successfully realigned the Swiss Post subsidiary SwissSign and decisively initiated and helped shape the certificate business.

(Press release/RAN)