Investor Spotlight: M Ventures
Event details
| Date | 25.04.2019 |
| Hour | 16:30 › 18:30 |
| Speaker | Jasper Bos, PhD and Francois Conquet, PhD |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
Would you like to learn about the career opportunities in the biotech companies and start-ups around you?
The EPFL SV Postdoc association, in collaboration with the startup incubator BaseLaunch, has the pleasure to invite you to the Merck Ventures career event for life scientists, taking place Thursday the 25th of April 2019 at the SV faculty.
This Life Science event will have Dr. Jasper Bos, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of the M Ventures Healthcare fund, presenting an overview of the fund, its investment strategy and primary areas of interest as well as some interesting case studies.
A special example of the M Ventures investment strategy is Prexton Therapeutics, a Swiss-based biopharmaceutical company launched in 2012. We are also delighted that Dr. Francois Conquet, CEO and founder of Prexton, talks about the exciting story of the company’s powerful discovery platform used to target specific novel compounds focused on the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. Francois will also share his “lessons learned along the way”.
Merck Ventures is the strategic, corporate venture capital arm of Merck KGaA. Its mandate is to invest in innovative technologies and products with the potential to significantly impact Merck‘s core business areas. From their headquarters in Amsterdam and offices in the US and Israel, M Ventures invests globally in transformational ideas driven by great entrepreneurs. The fund takes an active role in its portfolio companies and teams up with entrepreneurs and co-investors to translate innovation towards commercial success. Merck Ventures has a significant focus on early-stage investing and company creation including the creation of spin-offs to leverage Merck‘s science and technology base.
Please join us at this event on April 25th 2019, 16:30 to 18:30, at Room SV1717, SV building, EPFL, Lausanne.
Program
16:30 Door opening
17:00 Dr. Jasper Bos, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, M Ventures
17:30 Q&A
17:40 Dr. Francois Conquet, Prexton Therapeutics
18:10 Q&A
18:20 Networking Apero
Participation to the event is free of charge; however, your registration till 24th April is mandatory.
Speakers
Jasper Bos, PhD
Jasper Bos joined Merck’s previous biopharma fund of M Ventures in 2009 and transitioned to Senior Vice President and Managing Director M Ventures in 2019. At M Ventures, Jasper Bos supported (amongst others) the early successful investments and exits in ObsEva (NASDAQ), EpiTherapeutics (sale to Gilead), and was an initiator of Prexton Therapeutics, which was acquired early 2018 by Luendbeck for close to $1,100 Billion, Calypso Biotech, Inthera, Metabomed and Asceneuron. He holds a PhD in Pharmacy from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and has previously worked in private equity and at the Netherlands Vaccine Institute. Jasper published over 35 articles on health economics, vaccines and mathematical modelling.
Francois Conquet, PhD
François Conquet defended his PhD in 1991, at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and did his Post-doc at Genentech. After that, he joined the GSK Research Institute of Geneva where he worked as a scientist in CNS research until 2001. Then, he left GSK to found Addex Pharmaceuticals in Geneva, where he stayed CEO until 2005. Addex is a Biotech company dedicated to the discovery of novel treatments for CNS diseases. Then, he joined Merck Serono as Director, Early Stage Licensing. In April 2012, at the closing of the Geneva site of Merck Serono, François founded Prexton Therapeutics as CEO. Prexton was a biotech dedicated to the development of an mGluR4 compound for Parkinson’s disease. Prexton raised 41M€ from 2012 until 2018. In March 2018, Prexton has been acquired by Lundbeck for 905M€.
Practical information
- Informed public
- Registration required
Organizer
- SV Postdoc Association
Contact
- Jamshid Asadzadehtabrizi