Mymetics Corporation, a Switzerland-based developer of mucosal and virosomal-based vaccines for infectious diseases, has made two appointments.
Grant Pickering has joined the firm as president and chief executive, while Christopher Henney has been elected as chairman of the Board. Mymetics has further announced the appointments of Ulrich Burkhard of the Marcuard Family Office and Pickering to its Board.
The firm is making these changes with the aim of obtaining additional financing and to advance the development of its vaccine platform.
Pickering replaces Jacques-Francois Martin, who will continue to support Mymetics in an advisory function.
Chris Henney
In connection with the new board appointments, Jacques-Francois Martin, Martine Reindle, Christian Rochet and Sylvain Fleury have resigned from the Mymetics board.
Fleury will continue in his role as chief science officer along with the remainder of the senior management team consisting of Ronald Kempers, chief financial officer and chief operating officer, and Toon Stegmann, chief science officer of the wholly owned subsidiary Mymetics BV.
Since January 2011, Pickering has been an executive-in-residence at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture capital firm located in Menlo Park, California. Prior to this he was president and ceo and a director of Juvaris BioTherapeutics, a developer of adjuvanted vaccines for infectious diseases. Before this, Pickering founded and served as president and ceo of Pharmada, a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing late pre-clinical and clinical stage small-molecule therapeutics for the treatment of cancer. He has also held multiple roles at Dendreon Corporation, as well as various sales, marketing and business development positions with Johnson & Johnson, Glaxo, and Algos Pharmaceutical Corporation.