Matisse Pharmaceuticals appoints Kees Groen and Marcel Jacobs to Board of Directors and Management Board.
Matisse Pharmaceuticals B.V., a clinical stage company developing a medicinal product for the treatment of sepsis, is glad to announce that it has made changes in its Board of Directors, Management Board and Supervisory Board in order to facilitate accelerated execution of its growth plans. After eight years of successfully leading Matisse Pharmaceuticals into a clinical stage company, its CEO Bob Kool and CFO Harry Relouw have decided to step back as Board of Directors of the company.
Kees Groen assumes role of Chief Executive Officer
Kees has joined the Matisse Board of Directors as CEO. Kees, pharmacist by training, has his background in regulatory authorities, big pharma and drug development consultancy. He founded two very successful consultancy companies. As a consultant Kees Groen has been involved on a management and operational level in the fields of preclinical and clinical development, regulatory affairs and licensing. Since 2005, he is also active as a private investor in the biotech arena. He is currently also CEO at Orca Therapeutics and DGr Pharma.
Marcel Jacobs assumes role of Chief Business Officer
Marcel has joined the Matisse Board of Directors as CBO. Marcel holds an MBA (University of Maastricht) in International Management. Marcel has worked in the field of business development, marketing, sales & investor relations and held various director positions in listed biotechnology companies Rhein Biotech, Berna Biotech & Crucell in The Netherlands, South Korea and Switzerland all mainly focusing on the prevention of infectious diseases. For the past years, Marcel was part of 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. Now Marcel returns to the biotechnology field and focuses on creating the conditions for accelerated growth of Matisse Pharmaceuticals.
Supervisory Board changes
Because of his new role, Kees Groen has stepped down as chairman of the Matisse Supervisory Board, a position he held since 2018. Georges de Meris currently Supervisory Board member, has taken over the chairman position. Bob Kool has been added to the Supervisory Board. The existing members Marcel Kloosterman and Richard Holslag further complement the Supervisory Board.
About M6229
Matisse’s platform technology is based on the discovery that in many patients suffering from sepsis, proteins called histones are released by the innate immune system and dying cells into the blood stream, where they are toxic to other cells. Due to a self-enforcing cascade, people may die from organ failure within one or two days. Preclinical results have shown that by neutralizing the toxic histones with Matisse’s product M6229, the negative cascade is terminated by neutralization of cationic histones by anionic M6229. Matisse claims to have identified an elegant solution for treating sepsis by using a non-anticoagulant fraction of heparin called M6229 to neutralize toxic circulatory histones. Currently, there is no effective treatment against sepsis. From the 50 million patients globally suffering from sepsis every year, some 20% die. According to a recent J. Crit .Care Med. study, sepsis is the most common cause of in-hospital deaths, costing over $62 billion annually in the USA alone.
About Matisse Pharmaceuticals
Matisse Pharmaceuticals BV was founded in 2014 in Geleen, the Netherlands. Matisse targets life-threatening inflammation by neutralizing cytotoxic components of the inflammatory system. Its main development program is the development of a medicine to fight sepsis and septic shock, which is currently in clinical phase.
For more information please contact:
Kees Groen, CEO
(T) +31 6 53648230
(E) k.groen@matissepharmaceuticals.com
(W) http://www.matissepharmaceuticals.com