Affitech Appoints Dr Robert Burns as CEO and Dr Alexander Duncan as SVP Research & Development
Affitech A/S announced that it has appointed two experienced biotech executives to head its management team. Dr Robert Burns, previously CEO of Celldex Therapeutics Inc., has assumed overall responsibility for Affitech as its new Chief Executive Officer. Dr Alexander Duncan, previously SVP Biopharmaceuticals for Astra Zeneca - Medimmune, also joins Affitech today as Senior Vice President of Research and Development. Dr Robert Burns takes over the Affitech CEO role from Dr Achim Kaufhold who, having successfully completed the recent combination of Affitech and Pharmexa, is leaving the Company. Dr Martin Welschof, Managing Director of Affitech Research AS, Oslo, continues in post.
Robert Burns is an experienced biotech business executive. He joins Affitech following the successful merger of Celldex Therapeutics and NASDAQ-listed Avant Immunotherapeutics. Prior to Celldex, Robert was Director of Technology Licensing at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, where he was played key leadership roles in the spin-out of 3 successful companies, Piramed in the UK, Lymphatix in Finland and Recepta, an antibody therapeutics business, in Brazil. Prior to that he was Commercial Director at both Oxford Glycosciences and British Biotech. Robert is also non-executive Chairman of Haemostatix, an early stage company specialising in blood clotting products. Robert holds a BSc in Chemistry and a PhD in oligosaccharide analysis from The University of Birmingham.
Alexander Duncan is a leading antibody research scientist and business leader. At Astra Zeneca he was a member of AZ Discovery senior management team and SVP Biopharmaceuticals. He led the Cambridge UK Discovery site, previously Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT), through its integration with Medimmune. Prior to its acquisition by Astra Zeneca, Alex was SVP Drug Discovery at CAT, where he built a recognised world class antibody discovery capability. In addition to playing a major role in the creation of the CAT-AZ alliance, he led CAT discovery collaborations with Wyeth, Merck, Human Genome Sciences, Elan, Pfizer, Immunex and others. Alex gained his PhD in Dr Sir Greg Winter's laboratory at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, University of Cambridge and held post-doctoral positions at the University of California San Diego.
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