Detlef Sasse looks back on over 30 years as a highly successful professional in international diagnostics, including 20 years in various management positions in the US and Europe. As Vice-President of International Commercial Operations at Beckman Coulter, he was responsible for Europe, Africa, and the Near and Middle East. His excellent knowledge of the global market, his extensive contacts and his long working experience make Mr. Sasse an expert on commercialization. Mr. Sasse holds a degree in chemistry.

An engineer by training, Hans-Günter Hohmann has over 30 years of experience in the life science industry. He was responsible for R&D in the Medical Group of Hewlett Packard. Later, he led Hewlett Packard's analytical division, developing and commercializing, among others, products for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology markets. He was also Managing Director of Hewlett Packard Germany. In the mid-nineties, he was in charge of the Patient Monitoring Division with facilities in the US and Germany. With the spin-off of Agilent Technologies, he became Vicepresident and Chairperson of the Executive Board of Agilent in Germany. Since 2004, he is an independent consultant and Board Member of BWcon, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting business in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

Dr. Frank Mühlenbeck is partner in aeris CAPITAL, a private investment office advising high net worth individuals. At aeris CAPITAL, Dr. Mühlenbeck is responsible for investments in life science companies. He previously worked at Steinbeis, a technology transfer institution in Germany. He studied Technical Biology at the University of Stuttgart and holds a doctorate in Cell Biology and Immunology.

Dr. Jörg Neermann started his venture capital career in 1996 at Atlas Venture, where he was a key member of the international life sciences team. In 1998, Dr. Neermann joined DVC Deutsche Venture Capital to develop and build their life sciences activities. In 2002, he became DVC’s Managing Partner, with responsibility for the overall investment strategy and operations. Early in 2007 he joined LSP as a Partner in the Munich Office. He also serves as member of the supervisory board of Affimed Therapeutics (D), Vivendy (CH) and is an observer to the supervisory board of Probiodrug (D). Dr. Neermann holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. degree in Biotechnology, which he studied at the Technical University Braunschweig and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge (U.S.A.). He also studied economics at Harvard Business School and at the Technical University Braunschweig.

Dr. Gerhard Ries is co-founder of BioMedPartners and has a strong background in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and consulting industries. Previously, Dr. Ries was a partner at InterPharmaLink, a management consultancy specializing in product portfolio and supply chain optimization for large pharmaceutical organizations. He also has several years of experience working as a project manager at McKinsey & Co, focusing on pharmaceutical and life science companies. Dr. Ries was business development manager at Novartis, responsible for licensing opportunities in the biotechnology sector. He holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Basel and a diploma in Biotechnology from the University of Applied Sciences Weihenstephan. Dr. Ries has several years of research experience in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, gained at Ciba Geigy, Boehringer Mannheim, Harvard Medical School and the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry.

Dr. Reithinger is a General Partner and Head of the Munich Office and joined Forbion in 2010. Prior to that he was Principal and later Partner of Global Life Science Ventures, a well established life science-focused partnership with offices in Switzerland and Germany. He started in Venture Capital in 1997 as an Investment Manager at Technologieholding VC GmbH which at that time was the leading German Venture Capital firm. Technologieholding was acquired by the 3i Group in early 2000, where Dr. Reithinger became a Director at its Germany's healthcare practice. Dr. Reithinger has served on the Boards of numerous life science companies including Epigenomics (IPO 2004), MBT (assets sold to Medigene AG), 4SC (IPO 2005), NeurogesX (IPO 2007), Fibrex Medical, Agendia and Santaris. Before this, Dr. Reithinger gained operational experience as a product development manager at Biometra/WhatmanPlc (now part of GE Healthcare). He holds a PhD in Biochemistry, which he obtained on protein design under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Arne Skerra (founder of Forbion's portfolio company Pieris AG); all in the department of Prof. Dr. Hartmut Michel (Nobel Laureate 1988) at the Max-Planck-Institute of Biophysics. As an undergraduate, he studied Molecular Biology/Microbial Biology and Biochemistry at the Universities of Heidelberg and Munich.