Advesya, a French/Swiss clinical-stage biotech company founded in 2020, is transforming the fight against cancer and autoimmune diseases. Building on years of academic research, advesya’s innovative work targets IL-1RAP, a unique antigen that is upregulated in various cancers and autoimmune conditions.
Established by founders Christophe Ferrand and Marina Deschamps, Advesya is a spin-out from the French Blood Institute (EFS) in Besançon (France), where it is deeply integrated into the medical and research community. Fueled by experts in drug development (spanning from target validation to product launch) since it was seeded by Jeito in 2022, the company is on a mission to deliver innovative treatment options to patients with critical unmet medical needs. Advesya has quickly evolved into a clinical-stage company and is now developing novel and customized treatment modalities, including a CAR T-cell (CCTx-001) and an ADC (ADV-101) that are tailored to each disease associated with IL-1RAP dysregulation.
A.I. Chief Executive Officer
Board Member
Chief Medical Officer
Chief Technology Officer
Chief Scientific Officer
Chief Financial Officer
Independent Board Member
Board Member
Board Member
Advisor
Advisor
Academic Founder and Board Member
Academic Founder
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A.I. Chief Executive Officer
Ksenija Pavletic is a Partner and Chief Commercial Officer (“CCO”) at Jeito Capital with over 25 years’ experience in pharma & biotech. She is an expert in both investment strategies and healthcare companies scaleups with a successful track record in fund raising, M&A, company & teams build ups, commercial organization build ups, product launches, market access.
As part of the Jeito founding team, Ksenija is also acting CEO since 2022. Prior to joining Jeito, she was CEO of Swiss-based, reproductive health pharma company PregLem SA where she led the company’s rapid expansion including its successful exit for CHF445 million three years after the inception.
Prior to PregLem, Ksenija worked for eleven years with Serono (then Merck Serono) in various regional and global business, sales and marketing positions and she led more than 7 global product launches.
Chief Medical Officer
Jens is a Board-certified haematologist and oncologist. With over 15 years of experience working in the pharmaceutical industry in global clinical development, his career highlights include:
Chief Technology Officer
Erik is a trained pharmaceutical scientist and immunologist.
He has over 17 years of experience working in the biotechnological and pharmaceutical industry, which has included:
Chief Scientific Officer
Chief Financial Officer
Thomas brings 15+ years of experience in Pharma and Biotech, financing both Private and Public companies including IPOs on Euronext and NASDAQ.
Prior to joining Advesya, Thomas spent 8 years as Chief Financial Officer of GenSight Biologics, a publicly listed French biopharma company developing gene therapies for neurodegenerative retinal diseases, where he led the company’s financing strategy from the Series B in 2015, to the IPO on Euronext Paris in 2016 and a number of follow-on transactions and structured financings.
From 2012 to mid-2015, Thomas was Vice President of Finance at DBV Technologies, where he led the Corporate Finance team and participated in public offerings and private placements, including the dual listing of the company on the NASDAQ Global Select Market in 2014. Prior to this, Thomas served as Northern Europe Business Controller at PregLem in London, held several positions at Ipsen, including UK Operations Controller in London and Senior Financial Analyst in the Global Operations division in Paris. He started his career in audit at Ernst & Young in Paris.
Thomas received a Master’s degree in International Finance from ESGF Paris and a Master’s degree in International Management from Neoma Business School in France.
Board Member
Dr. Stanley R. Frankel is a haematologist-oncologist with over 20 years of experience in the industry.
He received his B.A. in Applied Sciences, Biomechanics from Harvard College and his M.D. from Northwestern University. He has been a board-certified licensed physician since 1986. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital and his fellowship in hematology-oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
He has held academic and clinical appointments at several institutions, including Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Georgetown University, and the University of Maryland. He is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
His extensive experience spans research, clinical development, and commercialization of immuno-oncology and cellular therapies. He has led the clinical development of several FDA-approved drugs for treating hematologic malignancies. Dr. Frankel served as the Chief Medical Officer at Cytovia and was previously the Senior Vice President, Cellular Therapy Development at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS).
In addition to his roles in industry, Dr. Frankel serves as a consultant and is an independent member of the Board of Directors for Precision BioSciences and Myeloid Therapeutics. He also sits on the Scientific Advisory Boards for Adagene, Immunai, Chimeric Therapeutics, cTRL Therapeutics, Deka Biosciences and Sutro Biopharma.
Board Member
Dr Andreas Wallnoefer is a Partner at Jeito Capital.
He brings his extensive experience in growing business leadership positions, spending more than 25 years in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, including 14 years in the Roche R&D executive leadership team.
Andreas serves on the Boards of Jeito I portfolio companies EyeBio, CatalYm and Corteria Pharmaceuticals.
He has important knowledge of the Life Sciences investment industry having had key roles in several successful product launches and as former General Partner Investor at BioMedPartners, a European Life Science Venture Capital firm, based Switzerland.
During his time at BioMedPartners, Andreas has been successful in developing innovative companies and has been board member of several European biotech, including Alentis Therapeutics, Azafaros, Noema, Tolremo, and Amal SA until its acquisition by Boehringer Ingelheim for $366mn two years post investment.
Andreas holds a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Basel, degrees in Pharmaceutical Medicine and was trained as a clinical research fellow at the Centre of Human Drug Research at the University Hospital of Leiden, Netherlands. He also holds an Executive MBA from IMD Lausanne.
Scientific Advisor
Dr. Poul Sorensen, a native of Denmark, is a board-certified molecular pathologist and Professor of Pathology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada. He holds the Johal Endowed Chair in Childhood Cancer Research at UBC and is a Distinguished Scientist at the UBC Cancer Research Centre. Dr. Sorensen is also Director of the Academy for Translational Medicine at UBC, which strives to accelerate the progress of novel biomedical research and discovery through the translational pipeline to the clinic, by facilitating academic connections to industry, clinicians and policymakers.
Dr. Sorensen is an internationally renowned expert in mRNA translation and the use of proteomic strategies to characterize cell stress pathways and surface targets that are deregulated in childhood and adult solid cancers, particularly in high-risk sarcomas. Current work focuses on how tumour cells adapt to stress of the tumour microenvironment, such as hypoxia and oxidative stress, and how such adaptation contributes to enhanced metastatic capacity. Moreover, his team uses a variety of proteomic approaches to identify surface targets (i.e. the surfaceome) for immunotherapy in high-risk paediatric cancers, such as the IL1RAP protein in Ewing sarcoma.
Scientific Advisor
Cameron J. Turtle, MBBS, Ph.D., F.R.A.C.P., F.R.C.P.A.
Prof. Turtle earned his M.B.B.S. (medical degree) at the University of Sydney and his Ph.D. at the University of Queensland. He trained as a haemato-oncologist and worked in Australia and the United States of America leading clinical and laboratory research teams conducting multiple investigator-initiated phase 1/2 clinical trials of genetically modified cellular immunotherapies for patients with haematologic malignancies. His research laboratory investigates mechanisms of immune escape in cancer and develops novel engineered T cell immunotherapies.
Prof. Turtle is currently the CLEARbridge Chair in Cancer Immunotherapy in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney. He is also an affiliate investigator at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, WA, USA.
Founder and Board Member
Christophe is a research director at the UMR1098 Right Institute, in the French Blood Center (EFS), (Besançon, France) and director of R&D in advesya. With competence in medical molecular biology, gene and cell therapy, he is an active member of a number of national and international scientific societies. He is also a work package leader of the National French CART-cells consortium (UNITC, labelled by the National Institute of Cancer (INCA)).
Christophe has 25 years of extensive academic research experience in the field of cell and gene therapy, and 15 years working with IL-1RAP. During this period, he:
Founder
Marina is a research director at the UMR1098 Right Institute, in the French Blood Center (EFS, Besançon, France) and Director of CMC in advesya.
She has 20 years of experience in cell and gene therapy with T-cells in anti-tumor therapies with strong expertise in CAR T-cells,10 of which have been dedicated to IL-1RA. Highlights of her career include:
Founder and Board Member
Pr André Baruchel, MD, is Professor of Pediatrics at the Université de Paris and head of Pediatric Hematology-Immunology Department at the University Hospital Robert Debré (AP-HP) in Paris, France.
After medical studies at University Paris Descartes, André Baruchel has been trained in Pediatric Haemato-Oncology as a fellow in the Saint-Louis Hospital. He specialized in the field of pediatric leukemias both on the laboratory aspects (MRD studies, clonal evolution) and clinical research finally becoming the leader of the FRench Acute Lymphoblastic LEukemia Group (FRALLE) with a special interest in the adolescent. He is the coordinator of the French national ALL protocol (CAALL-F01). He is also involved in the new drugs field and became a member of the Innovative Therapies for Children with Cancer (ITCC) consortium executive board. Over the last years he particularly focused on the CAR-T cells area, Robert Debré Hospital being the first authorized center for pediatrics in France. He has served as a member of the International Member Committee of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) and has been a 10 year-member of the Data Safety Monitoring Committee of the Children’s Oncology Group (COG).