Christopher Missling
Christopher U Missling, PhD is President and CEO of Anavex Life Sciences, has over 20 years of healthcare industry experience within large pharmaceutical and biotech industry. Prior to joining Anavex, he served as Officer at Curis and ImmunoGen and previously at Aventis (now Sanofi). Christopher’s work is dedicated to finding potential cures for rare neurodevelopmental diseases, like Rett syndrome, autism spectrum disorder as well as degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease by utilizing precision medicine. Dr. Missling is working with his team to advance new potential treatments through clinical trials involving the respective patient’s advocacy groups. Dr. Missling has an MS and PhD from the University of Munich in Chemistry and an MBA from Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management and WHU.
Priyanka Jain
Dr. Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown
Dr. Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown is the director of the Biodesign Center for Health Through Microbiomes and a Professor at the School of Sustainable Engineering and The Built Environment, at Arizona State University. She has a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from Georgia Tech. She was awarded an NSF CAREER award, was selected Fulton Engineering Exemplar Faculty, and was recently awarded Arizona Researcher of the year by AZBio highly cited researcher in her field by Web of Science. She has funding for her research from many federal agencies including NIH, DoE, DoD, and NSF. She is a pioneer in research on gut microbiome and autism. She is author of 4 patents and more than 115 peer-reviewed publications. She specializes on molecular microbial ecology for bioremediation, the use of microbial systems for bioenergy production, and the human intestinal microbial ecology and its relationship to obesity, bariatric surgery, metabolism, and autism.
Magali Cordaillat
Dr. Magali Cordaillat-Simmons earned her PhD in 2005 at the Université Paris V René Descartes, France, in Pharmacology, and her second Master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Regulatory Affairs at the Strasbourg Pharmacy School in 2014. Following her doctoral work with Pr. Ariel Gomez in pediatric nephrology at the University of Virginia from 2006 to 2009, Magali joined the newly-created Pharmabiotic Research Institute (PRI), which is an industrial-scientific Association dedicated to supporting the field in the development and registration of microbiome-based medicinal products for the European market. As Scientific and Regulatory Affairs Director, and in close collaboration with the PRI’s more than 80 industry members and academic partners, she oversees the organization’s EU-wide initiatives, which include EU-funded R&I projects, national and EU-level scientific advice request dossiers, and collaborative Task Group work on shared challenges for the field (CMC, standardization efforts, clinical design).
Madeleine Livingston
Federico Bolognani
Dr. Bolognani joined Axial Therapeutics in Nov. 2020 bringing with him over 20 years of experience in translational neuroscience research in academia, pharmaceutical and the biotechnology industries. Most recently, Federico served as the Vice President and Head of Clinical Science at VectivBio in Basel, Switzerland. Prior to VectivBio AG, Dr. Bolognani was VP and Head of Clinical Science at Therachon AG, which was acquired by Pfizer in 2019. Prior to Therachon, Dr. Bolognani held various senior-level positions at Roche. As Translation Medicine Leader, Dr. Bolognani led several of Roche’s programs in neuroscience, including the successful Phase 2 balovaptan program in autism spectrum disorder, which was granted Breakthrough Designation in 2018. Dr. Bolognani received his Ph.D. and M.D. from Universidad Nacional de La Pata, Argentina and has an extensive scientific publication record in translational neuroscience research.
Lisa Campo-Engelstein
Stewart Campbell
Dr. Campbell joined Axial in 2016 as Vice President of Research & Development, and was appointed the company’s CEO in February 2021. in 27+ years in the pharma/biotech industry, Dr. Campbell held various leadership roles at Boehringer-Ingelheim, Insmed, Surface Logix, Ancora/Corden Pharma and Axial, Dr. Campbell has played an integral role in the discovery and development of eight clinical stage drug candidates, including the Rho kinase inhibitor belumosudil and TAK-607 (rIGF-1/BP-3). During his career Dr. Campbell has been co-inventor on 20 issued patents. He holds a BSc with Honors in Chemistry from St. Francis Xavier University, a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the Queen’s University (Canada), and did post-doctoral research at Duke University.
Wayne Finlayson
Wayne has extensive scientific and commercial corporate experience from over 35years in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector. Knowledge in regulatory structures and requirements, and experience in commercialisation of biotechnology, and the practical application of science for the creation of commercial enterprises. Wayne spent his early career years as a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of California, Berkley, following completion of a PhD in Organic Chemistry from La Trobe University. He progressed from initial roles focusing on pure scientific research to more managerial positions in the science and technology sector, including executive director of Both (NASDAQ)and ASX listed companies. Wayne founded Progen Pharmaceuticals in the early 1990’s and was managing director and CEO. After his time at Progen Pharmaceuticals, he worked as a technology investment consultant for high profile clients (including large investment firms) with responsibility for ensuring readiness of investee companies for public listing or other investment. Wayne’s experience, spanning the entire breadth of the biotechnology business spectrum, from post-doctoral researcher, to company founder and CEO, to investment consultant in the Biotechnology sector, means he has a thorough and well-rounded understanding of the challenges and expectations which need to be met to create and successfully commercialise biotechnological and pharmaceutical enterprises.
