News
Curexsys Appoints Christian Eckert as Chief Operating Officer
– Strengthened management team headed by Jörg Neermann as CEO
Curexsys GmbH, a leader in the emerging field of therapeutic exosomes, today announced the appointment of Christian Eckert, PhD, as Chief Operating Officer. He joins Curexsys´ recently expanded management board which consists of Jörg Neermann, PhD, Chief Executive Officer, and the Company´s co-founder Jens Gruber, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer.
“We welcome Christian Eckert to Curexsys´ management board,” said Jörg Neermann, CEO of Curexsys. “His extensive expertise in managing complex projects and his strong scientific background will be an ideal match for further growing Curexsys´ operations and business. We are now well positioned to achieve our goal of closing further partnerships with key industry players in the exosome therapeutics area.”
Christian Eckert joins Curexsys from Bristol Myers Squibb (Juno Therapeutics GmbH), where he was responsible for GMP manufacturing, external collaborations and various steering committees. Prior to that, he led the overall project management at Medigene AG, Munich. From 2011 to 2016, Christian Eckert was a project leader for assay development as well as collaborations and innovation projects at Evotec´s Munich site, formerly Kinaxo. At Kinaxo, Dr. Eckert worked as a senior scientist and team leader for proteomics and metabolomics from 2008 to 2010.
He studied biology and biochemistry at the University of Wuerzburg, Germany, and performed his Ph.D. and post-doc work at the Department of Pharmacology at LMU Munich.
“I am delighted that we could establish such a strong management team in less than a year following Curexsys´ foundation,” added Michael Shalmi, M.D., MBA, Chairman of Curexsys´ Board of Directors. “The Company has a very distinct approach in exosome development which differs from commonly used antibody-based processes and is designed to overcome a key hurdle in exosome preparation, namely remaining antibodies in the final preparation. We are therefore convinced that Curexsys´ leading-edge approach will enable a breakthrough in exosome-based therapeutics.”
Curexsys´ leading-edge exosome expertise builds on a sophisticated combination of proprietary technologies and know-how to generate next-generation exosome therapeutics in multiple disease areas. The Company receives strong backing from its founding investors Evotec and Sartorius and has unique access to their iPSC and panomics technologies and process engineering expertise, respectively.
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About Curexsys
Curexsys was founded by molecular biologist Jens Gruber, PhD, and the biochemist and serial entrepreneur Dr. Herbert Stadler. The Company has closed a first industry collaboration on its proprietary exosome platform with Sartorius and Evotec SE, which also involved a EUR 8.2 million seed funding.
Curexsys aims to become the leading supplier for clinical grade exosomes in regenerative medicine and anti-aging therapies. Exosomes are extracellular, nanoscale vesicles that are actively secreted from cells to transfer information to neighbouring cells and distant tissues. MSC-derived exosomes function as paracrine mediators that limit inflammation, reprogram immune cells, and activate endogenous repair pathways, recapitulating to a large extent the therapeutic effects of parental MSCs. Therefore, exosomes hold significant potential as diagnostics, therapeutics, and cosmeceuticals.