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The Next-Generation of GPCR-Targeted Drugs

Orion Biotechnology is unlocking the therapeutic potential of previously undruggable G Protein-Coupled Receptors (GPCRs) with a novel drug modality, proven discovery platform and best-in-class molecules. The company is advancing a diversified pipeline of potential first-in-class/best-in-class antagonist and agonist therapies against high-value GPCR targets in oncology, immunology and other serious diseases. Orion is led by a highly experienced team with world leading expertise in GPCR pharmacology and peptide/protein engineering.

Leadership Team

It takes skills in different disciplines to successfully bring a new treatment from concept through regulatory studies to a proven market ready product. We understand that, and have built a world leading team of recognized experts in their respective fields. What makes us stronger still are the relationships that our experts continue to foster with leading research institutions and partners around the globe.

Management

Head shot of Mark Groper
Mark Groper
Anatole Head Shot
Anatole Klepatsky
Ian McGowan Head Shot
Dr. Ian McGowan
Dr. Oliver Hartley Head Shot
Dr. Oliver Hartley
John Jussup Head Shot
John Jussup
Jason Burke Head Shot
Jason Burke
Jarret Engstrom

Board of Directors

Jean F. Chairman of the Board Head Shot
Jean Forcione
Head shot of Mark Groper
Mark Groper
Anatole Head Shot
Anatole Klepatsky
Teresa Firestone head shot
Theresa Firestone
Praveen Tyle Head Shot
Dr. Praveen Tyle

Advisors

Sir Gregory Winter

Sir Gregory Winter FRS is Chair Orion Biotechnology’s Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Winter was awarded the 2018 …
>> Read More.

Dr. Andreas Harstrick

Dr. Harstrick currently serves as CMO and member of the management board for Affimed and brings extensive experience in  …
>> Read More

Dr. Heinz-Josef Lenz

Heinz-Josef Lenz, M.D., FACP, is the Associate Director for Clinical Research and Co-Leader of the Gastrointestinal Cancers Program at  …
>> Read More.

Dr. Christian Heinis

Dr. Heinis is a Professor in Bioorganic Chemistry at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. His laboratory …
>> Read More

Dr. Laurent Jespers

Dr. Jespers serves as CSO for an allogeneic cell therapy biotech start-up based in Cambridge, UK. During his 12-year career at GSK he led …
>> Read More.

Global Headquarters

343 Preston Street

11th floor,

Ottawa, On K1S 1N4

CANADA

+1 343.291.1032

Switzerland

Campus Biotech

Innovation Park

Avenue de Sécheron 15

1202 Genève

SWITZERLAND

Poland

Orion Biotechnology

Life Science Park

UI Bobrzyńskiego 14

30-348 Krakôw

POLAND

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ORION Logo Pantone(375x133)

Our Headquarters

343 Preston Street

11th floor,

Ottawa, ON K1S 1N4

CANADA

info@orionbiotechnology.com

+1 343.291.1032

Mark Groper

President and Chief Executive Officer

Mr. Groper is the Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Orion Biotechnology Board of Directors. He has more than 30 years of business and entrepreneurial experience in the Health Industry including founder and senior executive positions at both private and public sector organizations. Mr. Groper is a health industry expert with a proven track record of successfully building companies from start-up through to large scale commercial operations. He has held senior positions with Accenture, Telus Health, Emergis and DINMAR – a health care business he founded, operated, and grew to become a highly successful international business. Known as a results-oriented entrepreneur, with a demonstrated track record of success, Mr Groper provides leadership in strategic planning, and business development, while maintaining a keen focus on operational management. Mark has also built a strong reputation for innovation leadership, judgement and integrity, and understands what it takes to drive health care technologies into successful products

Seated Anatole

Anatole Klepatsky

Chief Operating Officer

Mr. Klepatsky is the Chief Operating Officer and a member of the Orion Biotechnology Board of Directors. A senior executive with over 20 years of corporate management experience, Mr. Klepatsky has established success in corporate management, operations, and international business. Prior to joining Orion Biotechnology, he was a co-founder and Managing Partner of Altius, a leading Eastern European M&A firm with strong track record in healthcare, biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. He has also served as Director of several private and public corporations in Eastern Europe and Canada. As the Chief Operating Officer at Orion, Mr. Klepatsky will lead business operations

 

Ian McGowan MD, Phd, FRCP

Chief Medical Officer

Ian McGowan is the Chief Medical Officer of Orion Biotechnology. Originally trained in medicine at the University of Liverpool, UK, Dr. McGowan also has doctoral degrees from Oxford University in mucosal immunology and Liverpool University in drug development. Prior to joining Orion Biotechnology, he was a Professor of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and has published over 150 scientific papers, review articles, and book chapters. He currently is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. McGowan has over 25 years dedicated to the development of antiretroviral drugs and vaccines for the treatment and prevention of HIV infection. He previously worked at Glaxo Wellcome on the development of amprenavir and abacavir and was also a Director of Clinical Research at Gilead Sciences Inc. where he was responsible for the Phase 2/3 development of tenofovir disoproxil fumarate for the treatment of HIV infection. As the former principle investigator of the NIH funded Microbicide Trials Network, he had responsibility for the oversight of a global program of over 40 Phase 1 through Phase 3 clinical trials. Dr. McGowan has served as a consultant for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and is a former Chair of the United States Food and Drug Administration Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee.

Oliver Hartley

Vice President, Drug Discovery

Oliver Hartley is VP for Drug Discovery at Orion. He is the inventor of OB-002 as well as the key technology underlying Orion’s discovery platform. Trained as a biochemist, he completed a PhD in protein engineering (Cambridge, UK) with Sir Gregory Winter (Nobel Prize for Chemistry, 2018). Since then Oliver has worked at the University of Geneva, where his research on peptide engineering and GPCR pharmacology has led to a series of high-profile publications and new intellectual property, and at the Mintaka Foundation for Medical Research with a role as co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer.

John Jussup, BA, LLB

General Counsel and Corporate Secretary

Mr. Jussup is the General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for Orion Biotechnology. Mr Jussup brings a background of broad experience in international business, intellectual property, corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions and securities law to his role at Orion Biotechnology.  He received the Canadian General Counsel of the Year award, sponsored by The National Post and ZSA, in 2005, and holds the ICD.D designation from the Canadian Institute of Corporate Directors

With over 30 years experience in both the public markets and government sectors, he has been a corporate legal executive to leading technology companies as well as private and public sector institutions.  Mr. Jussup was Senior Vice President, Chief Legal Officer & Secretary of Cognos Inc, Canada’s largest software company from 1993 until its acquisition by IBM in 2008.  He later served as General Counsel & Secretary of the Bank of Canada from 2009 until 2012.  He served as Chair of the Board of Keek Inc from 2013 until 2016 (listed on the TSX:V) and currently sits on the advisory board of PBC Real Estate Advisors, an Ottawa-based real estate investment fund. John Jussup has been a member of the Law Society of Ontario since 1977.

Jason Burke, CA, CPA

Chief Financial Officer

Mr, Burke is the Chief Financial Officer for Orion Biotechnology.   He has over 20 years of experience providing operational and financial expertise to rapidly growing companies.  Jason has previously served as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Conversant Intellectual Property Management (formerly MOSAID).  In these roles, Mr. Burke oversaw a fundamental reorganization of the company following a $560m leverage take private transaction by Sterling Partners, out of Chicago.  Prior to Conversant, Jason served as Vice President Finance and Principal Accounting Officer of Massachusetts based AVID Technologies – a publicly traded audio and video solutions provider with $680m in annual revenues.   Jason has also served as Chief Financial Officer of IBM Software Group, Business Analytics Division (Cognos and IBM Company) where he oversaw the integration of major portions of Cognos into IBM, as part of a $5 Billion acquisition.
 
For all of his achievements, Jason was recognized by Treasury and Risk Magazine as one of the top Global 40 under 40 finance professionals in 2010.

Jarret Engstrom

Director of Clinical Operations

Mr. Engstrom is the Director of Clinical Operations at Orion Biotechnology responsible for design and implementation of the company’s early clinical development platform. Mr. Engstrom has extensive experience spanning preclinical strategy and operations, CRO/CMO oversight, translational research and FDA regulated Investigational New Drug (IND) programs. Mr. Engstrom started his career as a Clinical Research Assistant and quickly advanced through increasingly senior positions to Director of Clinical Operations. He has worked with a variety of health organizations including the University of Pittsburgh Magee Women’s Research Institute, NASORCAP Medical, and ARGEN Health. In his previous roles, Mr. Engstrom was principally responsible for operational oversight, management, and delivery of complex translational research protocols as well as managing the critical relationship between laboratories and clinical research centers. He will continue this work at Orion Biotechnology providing leadership and operational management for clinical activities, with the goal of rapidly bringing our novel technologies to market.

Jean Forcione

Chairman of the Board

Mr. Forcione’s 33 year career has been devoted to the healthcare industry, including prescription pharmaceuticals, consumer healthcare, diagnostics and medical devices. Jean has held senior executive and board positions at both privately held and publicly traded organizations, which has included Aventis, Pharmacia, Pfizer, Johnson&Johnson, Phadia, ThermoFisher Scientific and BBI Group.

Jean is recognized for his general management, commercialization and M&A expertise in the life sciences sector.  Mr. Forcione has worked in, and been responsible for businesses around the globe and most recently has been focused on private equity backed businesses, first as an investor / executive and in the last 6 years as an investor, non-executive director and chairman. During this period, Jean has been closely involved with exits totaling 2.9B €, delivering outstanding value creation for shareholders.

Theresa Firestone

Board Member

Ms. Firestone joined the board of Orion Biotechnology in October of 2018, bringing with her extensive expertise in pharmaceutical and healthcare management. This has included government, retail, and various leadership roles with Pfizer inc., in Canada, Europe and Asia, with her last role as Regional President, Emerging Markets Asia (Shanghai & HK). Theresa was Senior Vice-President of Health and Wellness at Shoppers Drug Mart (SDM) until her retirement in early 2021. During her tenure at SDM, she was responsible for several business units including MediSystem Pharmacies, Specialty (Rx) Health Network, Pharmaceutical Partnerships, Wellwise retail stores and Medical Cannabis. Ms. Firestone was a Corporate Director for Merus Labs International (TSE: MSL) from 2014-17 and has held board positions with several not-for-profit organizations. She is currently a member of the University of Guelph Board of Governors. Theresa was awarded the prestigious Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002.

Praveen Tyle from Waste up

Praveen Tyle

Board Member

Praveen is currently founder of Potens Pharmaceuticals and has 40 years of pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry experience . Until April 2023, Dr. Tyle was the President, CEO and Board member of Invectys, Inc, an immuno-oncology company spun out of the world-renowned Pasteur Institute, Paris.  Prior to joining Invectys, Inc in 2021, he was Executive Vice President of Research & Development at Lexicon Pharmaceuticals. Until February 2016, Dr. Tyle was President, Chief Executive Officer and Member of the Board of Directors of Osmotica Pharmaceutical Corp. He led the merger of Osmotica with two other companies in 2016. He previously served as global Executive Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer and Managing Director of Osmotica Pharmaceutical Corp.’s Marietta, Georgia site. Prior to joining Osmotica, Dr. Tyle served as Executive Vice President and Chief Science Officer for the United States Pharmacopeia (USP). Prior to joining USP, Dr. Tyle served as Senior Vice President and Global Head of Business Development and Licensing at Novartis OTC, as well as Senior Vice President and Global Head of Research and Development.  Previously he served in a variety of senior pharmaceutical executive roles around the globe.

Dr. Tyle holds a doctorate in pharmaceutics and pharmaceutical chemistry from the Ohio State University and a Bachelor in Pharmacy (honors) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University in India..

Sir Gregory Winter

Chair Scientific Advisory Board

Professor Winter was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, cited specifically “for the phage display of peptides and antibodies”, the technology that led to “Humira”, the first fully human mAb to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is now the world’s top-selling pharmaceutical drug. He founded three start-up companies to develop therapeutic drugs based on his inventions, Cambridge Antibody Technology, Domantis, and more recently Bicycle Therapeutics who are developing a new class of therapeutics based on a bicyclic peptide product platform.

 

Dr. Andreas Harstrick​

Senior Research Advisor

Dr. Harstrick currently serves as CMO and member of the management board for Affimed and brings extensive experience in global cancer drug development from his former positions as SVP Global Clinical Development Oncology at Merck-Serono, SVP Medical Sciences Imclone/Eli Lilly and CMO Molecular Partners. During his career he has led the development, clinical phase implementation, and new biological entity approvals of multiple oncological agents including Erbitux® (cetuximab), Portrazza™ (necitumumab) and Cyramza® (ramucirumab).

An oncologist by training, Dr. Harstrick spent his medical career at the University Hospital and Cancer Center Hannover, Germany; the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo NY; as well as the West German Cancer Center, Essen, Germany. He earned his MD at Medical School Hannover, Germany, and in 1999 he became Associate Professor for Internal Medicine, University of Essen, Germany.

Heinz-Josef Lenz

Senior Research Advisor

Heinz-Josef Lenz, M.D., FACP, is the Associate Director for Clinical Research and Co-Leader of the Gastrointestinal Cancers Program at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Lenz is Professor of Medicine and Preventive Medicine, Section Head of GI Oncology in the Division of Medical Oncology and Co-Director of the Colorectal Center at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. An active researcher, Dr. Lenz focuses on topics including the regulation of gene expression involved in drug resistance, patients at high risk of developing colorectal cancer, and determination of carcinogenesis, methods of early detection, and better surveillance of these cancers. Dr. Lenz  serves as Co-Chair of the GI Committee and Correlative Science Committee for SWOG. He is a member of the NCI Task Force for Gastroesophageal Cancer, the NCI Steering Committee and the NCI Translational Science Committee. In addition to having an NCI-funded laboratory, he was a recipient of the ASCO Young Investigator Award, the ASCO Career Development Award, and the STOP Cancer Career Development Award.

Dr. Christian Heinis

Senior Research Advisor

Dr. Heinis is a Professor in Bioorganic Chemistry at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. His laboratory is developing combinatorial methods for creating therapeutics based on cyclic peptides and macrocyclic compounds. He has over 15 years of experience in peptide engineering, in vitro evolution, and drug development. Dr. Heinis is a co-founder of Bicycle Therapeutics, and co-director of the NCCR Chemical Biology, a research network of around twenty groups in the Lake Geneva area.

Dr. Heinis was trained in chemistry and biochemistry at the ETH Zurich. He did his PhD with Prof. Dario Neri (ETH Zurich), a first post-doc with Prof. Kai Johnsson (EPFL) and a second post-doc with Sir Greg Winter (LMB-MRC in Cambridge, UK).

Dr. Laurent Jespers

Senior Research Advisor

Dr. Jespers serves as CSO for an allogeneic cell therapy biotech start-up based in Cambridge, UK. During his 12-year career at GSK he led research teams as VP of Biopharm Innovation, and as VP of Discovery in Cell & Gene Therapy. Dr. Jespers drove the design and therapeutic application of over 10 therapeutic modalities (antibody, peptide, gene therapies, and autologous cell therapies) from concept to preclinical development in diseases areas such as Oncology Immuno-Inflammation, Metabolic, and Respiratory. Prior to GSK, he was Director of Discovery Engineering at Domantis Ltd, a company developing human antibody variable fragments.

Dr. Jespers earned his PhD in biochemistry from the University of Louvain, Belgium, and completed his post-doctoral training in protein engineering at the MRC-Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK.  Dr. Jespers co-developed the guided antibody humanisation approach which contributed to the development of Humira, the first fully human mAb to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

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contact us

Leave  us a message and we will try to respond by the next business day

ORION Logo Pantone(375x133)

Our Headquarters

343 Preston Street

11th floor,

Ottawa, ON K1S 1N4

CANADA

info@orionbiotechnology.com

+1 343.291.1032