Target focussed leadership - collective learning models aim to create novel anatomies for scientific value growth
InnVentis invites scientist from all disciplines to contribute to the appreciation and better understanding of short-chain-dehydrogenases and related nuclear receptors in an open source networks should ultimately lead to proprietary product development on the basis of Symbiotic Innovation
InnVentis is open to partner and share information/ideas with leaders to complement the network and provide solution packages to designated pharma clients. We encourage enthusiastic leaders and new talents that understand the dynamic changes of scientific break through and the pressing needs for pharmaceutical innovation which requires creative initiatives combined with an unusual depth of scientific knowledge and broad based technology understanding.
Contact requests and questions on collaborations should be send to, Dr. Thomas Wilckens:Thomas.Wilckens@InnVentis.com
InnVentis has created a unique network that includes several serial entrepreneurs, leading academic institutions as well as technology service providers that contribute their know-how in each step of drug discovery and development. InnVentis is the result of a successful established collaboration of leading experts and companies or institutions. More details on the founders and the technology partners that initiated the virtual project and that contribute their know-how and ressoucres to InnVentis' competence networks can be found "technology leaders & related links",which will be continously expended to cover steroid hormone biology most comprehensively. Find below the CV and an executive summary of Dr. Thomas Wilckens, an expert in translational research and translational medicine, i.e. translational sciences.
Thomas_Wilckens_Executiv_Summary_2010 on translational experience gatherd over 20 years in R&D.
Dr. Thomas Wilckens, CSO & Founder InnVentis
In Dr. Wilckens initiated he virtual foundation of InnVentis as a result of earlier collaborations with the founders and associated technology providers. Previously, as of 1999, Dr. Wilckens was the founder and CEO/CSO ot BioNetWorks GmbH 1999. Bionetworks was the first company aiming to establish a SDR/HSD-target platform. Early on, Bionetworks brought project into in vivo “proof of concept” with the natural compound glycyrrhetinic acid, BX-1, and abandoned the SDR/HSD-platform approach. From 1996 to 1998 Dr. Wilckens was at the Children’s hospital Garmisch-Partenkirchen, doing research in pediatric rheumatology. From 1998 to 1999 he was at CEVIS-Corporation later renamed Androclus Therapeutics, San Diego, USA, Director of Scientific and Business Development Europe. Before that, from 1993 to 1995 he was project leader at the “Institute for Hormone - and Fertility Research” at the University of Hamburg. From 1991 until 1993 he was research fellow with Professor Seymour Reichlin, the former president of the Endocrine Society USA, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Molecular Medicine, NEMCH, Boston, USA and with Professor Charles A. Dinarello, Department of Geographic Medicine and Infectious Diseases, Tufts, University School of Medicine at the New England Medical Center, NEMCH, Boston, USA. During 1988 to 1991, Dr Wilckens was doctoral fellow at the Max Plank Institute for Psychiatry/Munich, Division of Psychoneuroendocrinology with Professor K.M. Pirke. Dr Wilckens obtained his doctorate of medicine, at the Technical University Munich in 1991. Within his doctoral thesis (summa cum laude) he linked the 5HT-2c receptor to satiety and compulsive behaviour. In 1989 he got his “approbation” as MD. Before 1993 he was a stipend of the Max Kade Foundation, New York and before 1991 a stipend of the Max Planck Society.
Dr Wilckens has authored 5 patents and is member of the Endocrine Society USA, German Society of Endocrinology, German Society of Immunology, and the Section on Pediatric Gynaecology in the German Pediatric Society, he is also reviewer for “Trends in Pharmacological Sciences” and “Immunology Today”.
Furthermore, Dr Wilckens has established an academic network proving access to leading animal and clinical research in autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, as well as the” in “proprietary” indication not currently targeted by Big-Pharma SDR/HSD-programms
Dr. habil. Lutz Weber and liaison with OntoChem
Dr. Weber has over 15 years of research experience in pharmaceutical chemistry, chemoinformatics and drug discovery. He has managed research teams of over 120 scientists, and annual research budgets of up to EUR 20,000,000. He was recently honored by the invitation to receive a full professorship and Chair in Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Marburg, Germany. He has been a recipient of two European Union grants and several German government grants. He is the author of ca. 60 research papers, 10 book chapters and reviews, 30 patents, a member of the advisory board of “QSAR & Combinatorial Science”, the editorial board of “Journal of Combinatorial Chemistry” and the American Chemical Society.
Dr. Weber has founded NexusPharma Inc., a US based oncology focused development company in 2004. From 1998 to 2004, he was founder and head of Morphochem AG, a German biotechnology company, and of Morphochem Inc., the US-based subsidiary of Morphochem, building the research team at Morphochem. Before his work at Morphochem, he was responsible for the “new technologies” department of Hoffmann-La Roche at Basel, Switzerland.
Dr. Weber’s experience includes the direction of several drug discovery projects that led to the identification of new small molecules as drug candidates and moving four projects into clinical development. He has also led collaborative drug discovery efforts between Genentech and Roche.
At Morphochem he was instrumental in closing private equity financing rounds totaling EUR 80 million. He initiated collaboration agreements with Morphochem and pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca, Aventis, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Novartis and Pfizer as well as biotechnology companies such as Arpida, Probiodrug, Sosei, Synt:em, and The Genetics Company.
OntoChem will act as medicinal chemistry service provider for InnVentis GmbH.
Supporting academic partners:
Prof. Dr. Alex Odermatt
Dr. Odermatt is an expert in glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid receptors and 11b-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenases,. April 1st he started his Professorship at the University of Basel, Department of Pharmacology, which is sponsored by the Novartis Science Foundation. At the University of Bern he was heading a research group of eight scientists at the Department of Nephrology and Hypertension in the Department of Clinical Research, University of Berne, Switzerland. Dr. Odermatt, a Cloëtta Research Fellow, is also co-supervising the projects and responsible in part for the education of 20-25 scientists, medical students and clinicians from the Department of Nephrology and Hypertension.
He received his "Titularprofessur" in 2006 and his habilitation in Molecular Genetics from the Medical Faculty, University of Berne in 2001, his PhD in Molecular Biology/Biochemistry, Science Faculty, University of Berne in 1994.Before joining the University of Berne, he was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation and was recipient of a three-year postdoctoral fellowship from the Medical Research Council of Canada, at the Best Institute, University of Toronto, Canada from 1995 to 1998. As a Post-Doctoral Fellow with Prof. David MacLennan, he worked on calcium ATPases and muscle disease using human genetics, molecular biology and biochemistry techniques. During his PhD training with Prof. Marc Solioz at the Department of Clinical Pharmacology, University of Berne, he worked on bacterial copper transport proteins and regulatory mechanisms.
Dr. Odermatt is the recipient of several research grants and awards from the Swiss National Science Foundation, Swiss Foundation for Muscle Disease, Roche Research Foundation and the Swiss Cancer League.
Dr. Odermatt has published 30 research papers, 7 reviews and was recently involved in filing a patent. He is member of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) and the Swiss Society of Biochemistry.
Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Jerzy Adamski
Professor Jerzy Adamski, is a Head of Genome Analysis Center at the Helmholtz Zentrum Munich and Head of Molecular Endocrinology and Proteomics Group. PhD in Biochemistry (1984) in Polish Academy of Sciences and Medical University Poznań, Poland. Post-doctoral position at Max-Planck-Institute for Experimental Endocrinology, Hannover (1985-1996), habilitation in biochemistry at the University of Hannover, visiting scientists in the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden (1999-2000). Independent position since 1996 in the GSF. He holds Professorship of Biology at the Technical University of Munich. The Genome Analysis Center (GAC), a part of IEG, was established to promote high throughput research with the focus to investigate genomic and proteomic mechanisms in the development and progression of common complex diseases in man. Several human multifactorial diseases such as breast cancer, osteoporosis, CHILD syndrome, and further severe disorders of neuronal and renal development such as Zellweger syndrome or Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome are associated with abnormal metabolism of sterols, steroids and fatty acids. The interest of J. Adamski is to identify the factors, both at the genomic and proteomic levels, responsible for the pathogenesis of diseases. His laboratory discovered 17beta-HSD4, 7 and 14. Grant support: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Bavarian Science Foundation Schering AG, Jenapharm, Solvay Pharmaceuticals, and Swedish Cancer Foundation. J. Adamski performed already international research supported by FP6, VIGONI, PROCOPE, STINT, DAAD and NATO in Europe and cooperates at the international level with SDSU (San Diego, USA, NIH support), Academia Sinica (Taiwan) and Oxford University (UK). The coordinator has experiences in coordination of research between academics and industry, both at the national and international levels. He is a member of German Society of Cell Biology, Proteomic Society. He is Scientific Editor of Endocrine-Related Cancer and Review-Editor in Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology. He published over 100 publications, several book chapters and hold four patents on enzyme-specific inhibitors.
IInnVentis is in close communication with a variety of leaders in the academic and industrial research, to allow jump-starting additional projects to those currently in development