Our team

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MANAGEMENT TEAM

MIKE GARRETT

Chief Executive Officer

MIKE GARRETT

Mike Garrett has more than 25 years’ experience in the biotech industry in positions of increasing responsibility. Prior to co-founding Flamingo Therapeutics, he was a Partner with TCG, a life science consulting group in RTP, North Carolina. He was Vice President of Corporate Development at Scynexis, Inc. and a member of the team that executed the company’s IPO. Mr. Garrett was Global Vice President, Ventures & Business Development for BTG plc, with responsibility for the company’s investment portfolio. Prior to this he worked in the corporate venture group of Aventis (Paris) and in their business development group. Earlier in his career he was a patent attorney in the Rhone-Poulenc Intellectual Property department, based in France and the UK.

Mr. Garrett is a British and European Patent Attorney, holds an Honors degree in Chemistry from Southampton University, UK, and an Executive Certificate in General Management from the Cedep INSEAD business school, France.

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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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kenny simmen

Kenny Simmen has 30 years of global pharmaceutical industry expertise and is currently a scientific and business advisor, Board / SAB member for several biopharma companies. Dr Simmen trained as a molecular biologist at the University of Edinburgh, obtained his Ph.D. from the EMBL in Heidelberg and completed postdoctoral work at the Netherlands Cancer Institute before joining pharma, initially with Roche UK before joining Johnson & Johnson.

In his J&J roles Kenny built and led the infectious diseases therapeutics early-stage R&D team and strategy against many pathogens (including HCV, HBV, RSV, Influenza, dengue, MRSA) for over a decade in which that team progressed numerous therapeutics to the clinic, including the approved Hepatitis C virus antiviral (Simeprevir), co-developed with Medivir AB. Later, as global VP & head of Scientific Innovation for Infectious Diseases & Vaccines with J&J Innovation he led the establishment of many early-stage international collaborations & license agreements covering infectious diseases, vaccines and platform technologies.

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