Franz Hefti and Ulrich Feige join Covagen’s Scientific Advisory Board

24-Aug-2009 - Switzerland

Covagen has announced the appointment of Dr. Franz Hefti and Dr. Ulrich Feige as members of its Scientific Advisory Board.

Dr. Franz Hefti is currently Chief Scientific Officer of Avid Radiopharmaceuticals (Philadelphia, USA), a biotech company developing imaging agents for neurodegenerative diseases. Previously, he was Executive Vice President of Drug Development at Rinat Neuroscience Corporation (San Francisco, USA), a Genentech spin-out company acquired by Pfizer Inc., where he brought antibody therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease and chronic pain from discovery research to clinical development.

Before joining Rinat, he was Senior Vice President of Neuroscience Research at Merck & Co., where he coordinated the company's neuroscience research worldwide and served as site head for the neuroscience research centers in the United Kingdom and San Diego. During his tenure, small molecule drug candidates covering several diverse drug targets in the neuroscience area were taken into clinical studies. Prior to Merck & Co., Dr. Hefti was Director of the Neuroscience Research Department at Genentech. Before working at Genentech, he spent more than a decade in academia as a Professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and Associate Professor at the University of Miami, where he carried out seminal research on therapeutic applications of neurotrophic factors. Dr. Hefti received his PhD from the University of Zurich and did his postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Max Planck Institute in Munich.

Dr. Ulrich Feige is currently President of EUROCBI GmbH, a company offering strategic consulting services in the area of drug development. From 2005 to 2007, Dr. Feige served as Executive Vice President Preclinical Development at ESBATech (Zurich, Switzerland). Prior to ESBATech, he headed the Inflammation Pharmacology Group at Amgen as Director of Pharmacology from 1995 – 2005, and he was involved in the development of TNF-alpha and IL-1 inhibitors. At Amgen, Dr. Feige invented the peptibody technology, which resulted in 2008 in the FDA approval of N-plate (romiplostin, AMG531), a thrombopoiesis stimulating peptibody. Before his engagement at Amgen, he worked in the Inflammation and Bone Department of Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis) in Basel.

Dr. Feige studied chemistry and received his PhD from the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology in Freiburg, Germany. He pursued postdoctoral studies at the Department of Experimental Dermatology of the University Hospital in Münster, Germany, where he investigated the cytokines and biology of the human monocyte / macrophage system.

https://www.bionity.com/en/news/105088/franz-hefti-and-ulrich-feige-join-covagens-scientific-advisory-board.html