Management board

Marcel is the CEO of Matisse Pharmaceuticals with a main focus on securing funding to reach the next milestones as well to manage the strategic, organisational and financial aspects of Matisse together with a great team of experts. Marcel has joined Matisse as CBO in 2022 and the Matisse Board of Directors in February 2023. 

Marcel holds an MBA in International Management. He started in Biotech in 1998 and thereafter worked in the field of business development, marketing, sales & investor relations. He held various director positions in listed infectious disease biotechnology companies Rhein Biotech, Berna Biotech & Crucell (taken over for USD 2.4 billion by J&J in 2011) and worked in The Netherlands, South Korea and Switzerland. 

In 2011, Marcel joined the management board as global commercial director for VDL Bus & Coach as well as board member of all of its 13 foreign affiliates. In this period, the company achieved market leadership in the transition to zero emission public transportation in Europe. 

Kees is Chief Development Officer with the main focus on advancing M6229 through the next clinical phase and to prepare the necessary regulatory steps towards market introduction. Kees has been Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Matisse Pharmaceuticals since 2017 and is one of the early investors in the company. He joined the Matisse Board of Directors as CEO in February 2023.   

Kees Groen is co-founder and CEO of DGr Pharma and was founder and from 1997 until 2015 General Manager of Kinesis Pharma, a consultancy company in drug development. He was also co-founder and CEO of LAP&P Consultants, a modelling and simulation company and he was a member of the drug development management team at Tibotec (now Janssen), an extremely successful company in the field of HIV. Kees holds a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Kees has extensive experience in pharmaceutical research and development with regulatory authorities (six years with the Dutch Medicines Evaluation Board) and within the industry in Europe, US and Asia. This included the generation and evaluation of in vitro data on absorption, metabolism and excretion, the mathematical modelling of these data and simulation/extrapolation of data from animals to man. As a consultant, he has been involved in the fields of preclinical and clinical development on a management and operational level, regulatory affairs and licensing. He has a broad knowledge in the area of small molecules as well as biotechnological products. 

As one of the early  investors, Peter has been working as project director for Matisse since the start of the company in 2014. He is currently member of the management team as COO.  

Peter Ekhart holds a master degree in chemistry, bioprocessing technology and a MBA and has more than 28 years of experience in project management in multiple Life Science companies including Friesland Campina, TNO, Prosensa Therapeutics, Micreos and ISA Therapeutics.

For Prosensa Therapeutics he managed two lead product development projects up to proof of concept resulting in the collaboration with GSK and a take over by Biomarin. At ISA, Peter realised the initiation of the first in man clinical study for the therapeutic vaccine against cervical cancer in 2013. In close collaboration with the UMCG and VU he organised and managed a clinical study for an oral hygiene product in Sjögren patients. For Aeon Astron he has managed the initiation of the BioCornea project resulting in a granted innovation credit loan of €3 M in 2012. At Micreos he helped organizing a first in man study for a topical treatment in eczema patients. 

Within Matisse, Peter mainly focuses on project management of the current M6229 lead product clinical development, CMC and IP.

Gerry Nicolaes studied chemistry from 1987 till 1993 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, where he specialised in Biochemistry. In 1997 he received his PhD from the Faculty of Medicine of the Maastricht University , which was awarded a "cum laude" distinction.

He then accepted a postdoctoral position at the Wallenberg Laboratory, University of Lund, Sweden. From late 2000 till present, he continued his research at the Biochemistry Department of the Maastricht University after being granted several grants by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) to start his own research line. His work focuses on translational structure-function and drug discovery & design studies in the fields of inflammation, atherosclerosis and coagulation, with a special emphasis on NETosis, DAMPS, and histone-mediated cytotoxicity. He is the leader of a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action Doctoral Network called PRAETORIAN, which focuses on novel approaches in precision sepsis patient care, funded by the EU and aiming at the establishment of a highly multidisciplinary research and educational platform for doctoral candidates in the biomedical sciences.

Gerry is one of the co-inventors of the findings and technologies that resulted in the IP that is at the foundation of Matisse Pharmaceuticals. Gerry published some 120 peer-reviewed scientific articles and supervised 19 doctorate candidates.