Pureos Bioventures expands team of venture partners
Pureos Bioventures, a venture capital fund dedicated to support private biotech companies developing novel therapies, has appointed several venture partners to its team. The firsttime fund has US$205 million under management and has invested in 11 private biotech companies so far. In addition, Pureos is a partner at BaseLaunch, an incubator of biotech startups in Basel, Switzerland. The first portfolio companies of Pureos Bioventures have already gone public or have been acquired.
As new venture partners Dr. Dragan Grabulovski, Ian Metcalfe and Dr. Roberto Iacone have joined the team as of September 1. Dr. Grabulovski was CSO and co-founder of Covagen AG, a Swiss biotech company focusing on bispecific antibodies and antibody alternatives. Cilag GmbH International, an affiliate of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson acquired Covagen in 2014. Since 2015 Dr. Grabulovski has been an independent advisor to biotech start-ups, coach at the ETH Zurich and Innosuisse (Swiss Innovation Agency), board member and entrepreneur.
Metcalfe joined NovaGo Therapeutics as CEO in 2020. Before NovaGo, Metcalfe worked as Chief Operating Officerfor Corlieve Therapeutics, which was acquired by uniQure in July 2021. Prior to that, Metcalfe held positions of increasing responsibility at both Roche and Nestlé, including Investor Relations, business development/M&A, Global Product Strategy, and late stage Pharma Development. Dr. Iacone is CEO of Alentis Therapeutics, a physician-scientist (MD PhD) and biotech entrepreneur who has advanced several assets to early clinical development. He has strong translational medicine and strategic experience across rare diseases, fibrosis, immunology, and oncology. Prior to Alentis, Dr. Iacone was part of the leadership team which built Black Diamond Therapeutics from inception through multiple financing rounds and to a NASDAQ IPO. Before that he was heading rare diseases research at Roche.
Managing Partners of Pureos, Klaus Breiner, Dominik Escher, and Martin Münchbach commented:“We are very pleased to welcome Dragan, Ian and Roberto as our venture partners. They bring tremendous additional experience of building biotech companies to Pureos, which will help the fund to start up and foster our portfolio companies.”
