Our team

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MANAGEMENT TEAM

JEANNE BOLGER

Chair of the Board &
Interim CEO

JEANNE BOLGER

Dr. Bolger has over 35 years of pharmaceutical industry experience in management roles across R&D, Commercial and Business Development, and Venture Investments at Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC and at GlaxoSmithKline. She has been leading investments across Europe in start-up and early-stage life science companies and represented JJDC on the Board of Directors of over a dozen companies. She is also a Venture Partner at Seroba Life Sciences Venture Capital and serves on several government taskforces and advisory boards. She is a visiting lecturer on the MSc Pharmaceutical Medicine program at Trinity College Dublin. Dr. Bolger received her medical degree from University College Dublin. She is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Ireland (RAMI).

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VIKI BOCKSTAL

Chief Scientific Officer

VIKI BOCKSTAL

Ever since the early beginning of her career, the focus of her interests has been on infectious diseases. Prior to joining ExeVir in 2021, Viki led various teams at J&J’s Janssen Infectious Diseases and Vaccines for nearly a decade. In her last role as Biomarker Lead for the Ebola and Filovirus programs, she was responsible for determining the immunological strategy to advance the Ebola vaccine regimen through accelerated clinical development from Phase 1 up to Marketing Authorization Approval by the European Commission. In previous roles, she also worked on the development of a new poliovirus vaccine and HIV vaccine. Viki is a Belgian American Educational Foundation (BAEF) alumnus.

In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her family and three young children, mountain biking, hiking and being outdoors.

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Caroline Sagaert

Chief Operating Officer

Caroline sagaert

Experienced Leader in Life Sciences with a proven track record in the Pharmaceutical (UCB, Innogenetics, GSK vaccines) business.
Bringing a broad expertise in transforming innovation into patient access.
Experience in managing a culturally diverse team.
Demonstrated agility in working with multidisciplinary cross-functional matrix teams.
Passionate about science and value creation for patients

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SCIENTIFIC FOUNDERS

XAVIER SAELENS

Professor Xavier Saelens, scientific founder of Exevir is a Group Leader at the VIB-UGent Center for Medical Biotechnology at VIB and a full Professor Molecular Virology at Ghent University.

His research is primarily focused on influenza and respiratory syncytial virus. The aim of this research is to develop new vaccines and antibody-based intervention strategies to prevent and treat disease caused by these and other important human respiratory viruses. A second line of research in the Saelens group aims to increase our knowledge on the molecular interactions between influenza and respiratory syncytial virus and their human host.

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NICO CALLEWAERT

Professor Nico Callewaert, scientific founder of ExeVir, is Director at the VIB Center for Medical Biotechnology and Professor of Biochemistry and Biotechnology at Ghent University.

Based on strengths in glycobiology, microbial biotechnology, biological system’s engineering and bio-analytics, his research group is developing innovative molecular technology to enable novel approaches to the study, diagnosis and treatment of disease. Nico and his team have ample expertise in Protein production in mammalian cells, FEMTO Pulse Automated Pulsed-Field CE instrument, Sugar analysis – glycomics (DSA-FACE), Protein production in yeast, Recombinant DNA techniques for synthetic biology.

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SCIENTIFIC Advisors

Christophe Blanchetot

CHRISTOPHE BLANCHETOT

Christophe has more than 15 years of expertise in antibody and antibody fragment discovery & development. After his PhD in Molecular & cellular Biology from the Utrecht University in The Netherlands in 2000, he got a Post-Doctoral position in Montreal at the McGill cancer center until April 2005 before going back to the Netherlands as PI at Utrecht University. In 2009 he joined Argenx as one of the first employees and became Senior Director Discovery with multiple responsibilities such as supervising the antibody discovery and innovative engineering activities; Leading internal and external programs; Scouting, evaluating and building novel programs; Managing the lab capabilities, the lab organization and create interactive and competitive team of people. In 2022 he joined ExeVir as an external consultant on Antibody and Antibody Fragment discovery and development.

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prakash bhuyan

Dr. Bhuyan is an experienced Infectious Diseases specialist with 20+ years of experience in academia and industry. Most recently, Prakash was the Head of Clinical Development for Vaccines and Immune Therapies at AstraZeneca, organizing and managing the teams that developed COVID solutions (Vaxzevria™ and Evusheld™), as well as RSV and Influenza focused products. Prior to that he was the Senior Vice President, Clinical Development, at Inovio Pharmaceuticals leading the product development of a novel HPV therapeutic into Phase 3, achieving pivotal trial success. Prakash held vaccines and biologics leadership roles at Pfizer and Merck which resulted in Trumenba™ becoming the first vaccine licensed in the US for this disease, when it was most needed during a Meningococcal B outbreak. While at Merck, Prakash was the product development leader moving a novel pediatric hexavalent vaccine into Phase 3 development, which has since been licensed in the EU as Vaxelis™ making complete childhood vaccination more achievable.

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