Management
Jesús Martin-Garcia, Chief Executive Officer
Jesús began his career in 1983 at the World Economic Foundation, and in 1989 at McKinsey & Co where he led studies in the pharmaceutical and food industries. By 1993, he chose the entrepreneurial path by creating, investing and leading start-ups in Switzerland and the United States. He was for example a co-founder of LeShop in 1996, which became the Swiss leader in e-commerce and was sold to Migros. In 2003, he created Eclosion, a public-private partnership for translating scientific discoveries in the field of life sciences into innovative drugs with disruptive potential. This unique structure was instrumental in the creation of GeNeuro, which was led by Jesús since its creation in 2006. Jesús holds a bachelor's degree in industrial sciences, a master in law from Geneva University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He serves on the board of several biotech companies and industrial and business associations.
Dr. David Leppert, MD, Professor of neurology, Chief Medical Officer
David graduated with an MD from the University of Zurich Medical Faculty, where he also completed his specialty training in neurology. He completed research fellowships in neuroimmunology and neurophysiology at the University of California, San Francisco, and founded the Clinical Neuro-immunology Laboratory at the University Hospital Basel in 1995, serving in parallel as head of the epilepsy outpatient clinic from 1999 to 2004. He received the 2nd Hoechst-Marion-Roussel prize for MS research (1999), the Ellermann Prize of the Swiss Neurological Society (2001), and the Baasch-Medicus Award (2002) for his research on the role of matrix metalloproteinases and genomics in MS. He began his industry career in 2004 at GlaxoSmithKline in translational medicine and later at in GE Healthcare for diagnostic drug development. He was then Senior Medical Consultant at Novartis and Global Project Medical Director for the Siponimod MS program, before joining Roche as Global Development Team Leader of ocrelizumab, later becoming Therapeutic Area Head Neuroinflammation. He returned to Novartis in 2015 as Therapeutic Area Head Neuroinflammation, where he was responsible for early and late stage development of MS compounds. Most recently, he was Senior Research Associate at the University of Basel, focusing on research on neurofilaments and other biomarkers of neurological diseases. David has authored over 100 peer reviewed publications.
Dr. Hervé Perron, HDR, Chief Scientific Officer
Hervé has a PhD in Virology and wrote a doctoral dissertation on neuroimmunology. He is the author of over 120 peer-reviewed publications and patents and is a referee for various scientific journals. He was Research Director of R&D within bioMérieux for the development of in vitro diagnostics for neurological diseases. Hervé was Scientific Director of bioMérieux STELHYS, a spin-off dedicated to the evaluation of developments in upstream research projects. Hervé is a co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of GeNeuro and the general manager of GeNeuro-Innovation.
Miguel Payró, Chief Financial Officer
Miguel has worked in corporate finance since 1985, first in various Swiss banks and then in industry since 1991, working in strong growth environments, initially with Unilabs SA, a European leader in clinical laboratory testing, for which he was in charge of the Swiss IPO and of numerous M&A transactions and international development. From 2003 to 2015 he was Chief Financial Officer of the Franck Muller luxury watch group in Switzerland, where he led, amongst other things, numerous M&A, tax and shareholder transactions, before joining GeNeuro in 2015 as CFO. Miguel graduated from the University in Geneva with a degree in business administration.
Dr Alois B Lang, Chief Development Officer
Dr. Alois B. Lang has been the Company’s Chief Development Officer from 2007 to 2017 before rejoining GeNeuro in September 2021. Dr Lang holds a doctorate from the Ecole Polytechnique of Zurich and did postdoctoral work at the Zurich University Hospital and with the Immunology Department of Cetus Inc. in Palo Alto, United States. Dr. Alois B. Lang was also a professor of immunology at the Faculté de médecine (medical school) of the University of Berne. He held the position of Chief of Research and Immunology and Project Director for Berna Biotech, in Berne. He was also co-founder and Scientific Director of Kenta Biotech in Zurich.
Dr. Alois B. Lang is involved in various working groups with scientific experts and regularly participates in major scientific conferences.