Abivax, a French clinical stage biotech company developing and commercialising anti-viral drugs and therapeutic vaccines, has made three new appointments.
Jean-Marc Steens has joined the firm as Chief Medical Officer, while Antonino Ligresti and Dominique Costantini have been appointed to its board of directors.
Dr Steens has almost three decades of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. During these years, he held leadership roles with a focus on viral diseases (especially HIV/AIDS, but also hepatitis B) in both global clinical development and medical affairs.
He began his career at Sandoz in Belgium and subsequently joined Glaxo where he stayed for more than 20 years and carried extensive responsibilities for the global clinical development, medical affairs and access programs for novel therapies and vaccines for HIV and other infectious diseases.
In 2009, he joined ViiV Healthcare as Vice President and International Medical Director, with responsibility for establishing and managing medical departments across Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America.
Since 2013, Dr Steens has been a consultant to various biopharmaceutical companies, including Novartis.
Ligresti replaces Jérôme Gallot, who resigned from the board on 6 July , and will represent Santé Holding, an anchor investor in Abivax's recent IPO.
Meanwhile, Costantini will take the seat of Miguel Sieler, who resigned from the board on 6 September. She is the co-founder and CEO of OSE Pharma, a company focused on therapeutic vaccines to treat cancer, which is currently entering clinical phase III for advanced lung cancers.
Prior to OSE Pharma, Costantini founded Onxeo (originally named BioAlliance Pharma) in 1997, a company focused on oncology and supportive care with drug delivery technologies. She took the company public in 2005, and was CEO until 2011.
