Dr. Spezzi brings over 25 years of experience as a clinician, researcher, pharma executive and entrepreneur. Dr. Spezzi, founded Orchard Therapeutics (stem cell gene therapy, IPO LSE), where she was Chief Medical Officer and R&D Head.
Before founding Orchard Therapeutics, Andrea served as VP and Medicine Development Leader at GSK. Before joining GSK, Andrea was Global Medical Director R&D at Takeda.
Prior to developing a career in the Pharma industry, Dr. Spezzi was a Research Physician at Hammersmith Medical Research and spent over 10 years as a pediatrician MD. She was a Fellow of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine in London.
Serge Picaud, PhD
Partner
Dr. Picaud has over 30 years of experience as an inventor, researcher, and entrepreneur. He is the Director of the successful Paris based life science incubator Vision Institute and is also aProfessor at the University Sorbonne in Paris.
Dr. Picaud has founded several biotech companies including Pixium Vision (retinal electronic implant, IPO Euronext), GenSight Biologics (gene therapy platform, IPO Euronext), Fovea Pharmaceuticals (drug discovery platform, acquired by Sanofi and Gamut Therapeutics (gene and cell therapy, acquired by Sparing Vision).
In addition, having held positions at the University of Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute Dr. Picaud also holds over 20 patents and has over 400 academic publications. He has a PhD in Neuroscience and holds a BA in Biochemistry from University Paris Saclay.
Guillen Lopez, MBA
Partner
Guillen brings an interdisciplinary background, with over 15 years of experience in venture capital, technology, and life sciences entrepreneurship. He holds an MBA from the London School of Business and has studied biomedical engineering at Paris Sciences Lettres University.
Before transitioning to venture capital, Guillen was a co-founder of Mindback Therapeutics, and previously he worked in R&D in bioengineering, AI, and robotics.
Guillen was also a corporate tech strategy executive and a researcher at the French Space Agency. He was commissioned by the United Nations’ UNESCO and ITU task forces to find technologies to mitigate the impacts of disasters.
GenSight Biologics (IPO) is in the final registration phase of what could be the 2nd gene therapy ever approved for an ophthalmic condition. In addition, GenSight has been the 1st company to ever perform an optogenetics technology-based clinical trial in humans.
Quethera was acquired by Astellas (Takeda) for its clinical pipeline to treat glaucoma using Gene Therapy technology, which also has potential applications to treat CNS diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Takeda will be starting first-in-human clinical trials for glaucoma soon and is exploring the therapy for neurodegenerative diseases.
Orchard Therapeutics (IPO) development programs focus on restoring normal gene function in primary immune deficiencies and metabolic diseases. Orchard’s pioneering technology uses a sample of the patient’s own stem cells, which are modified with a functioning copy of the missing or faulty gene before being transplanted back into the patient’s body.