Belgian biopharmaceutical firm Promethera Biosciences, a developer of a variety of cell therapies for the treatment of inborn liver metabolic diseases (ILMD), has appointed Torsten Hombeck as Chief Commercial and Strategy Officer.
Dr Hombeck will lead Promethera’s commercial and pre-commercialisation activities. He will also be responsible for the firm's general strategy, which includes market access, pricing and re-imbursement and regulatory filing strategies for its lead product candidate families Heparesc, HepaStem and H2Stem.
Promethera has also appointed Prof. Christof Hettich to the board as Chairman. Dr Hettich replaces John Tchelingerian who held the position from December 2014 and was subsequently appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Promethera in September 2015. Since then, he has held both roles. This move will allow Tchelingerian to focus exclusively on the role of CEO.
Hombeck has nearly two decades of biopharmaceutical industry experience. He was a Co-CEO and Chief Business Officer at Cytonet, spokesperson, Co-CEO and Chief Financial Officer at Agennix and Chief Financial officer at GPC Biotech. He has extensive experience in clinical and commercial drug development, as well as with regulatory filings for various drug development product candidates and financings of private and public companies including IPOs and follow ons.
Hettich is a lawyer and partner at Rittershaus Rechtsanwälte in Mannheim, Germany and is also a Co-founder and Managing Director of Dievini Hopp BioTech. For many years he has been on boards of private and publicly traded companies in different industry sectors. He is currently also Chief Executive of SRH Holding as well as an honorary professor at the Hochschule Heidelberg and an assistant lecturer at the University of Heidelberg.