Management & team
Arnaud Foussat
PhD., CEO
Dr. Arnaud Foussat, Chief Executive Officer brings to Yukin Therapeutics over 18 years of experience in immunotherapy research and development. Arnaud Foussat is also Operating Partner at AdBio partners. Arnaud Spend two years as Chief Operating Officer at Yukin Therapeutics, launching the company operations before taking the CEO role. Before joining Yukin Therapeutics, Arnaud was Chief Scientific Officer at TxCell (acquired by Sangamo Therapeutics in 2018) and developed the first generation of cell therapy products using Regulatory T cells (Treg cells) and launched the first program on CAR-engineered Treg cells. Arnaud spent 12 years at TxCell, managing the cell therapy research and process development with a strong involvement in regulatory affairs and corporate development. Graduate of Institut Pasteur of Paris, Arnaud Foussat obtained his Ph.D. degree of Immunology from the University of Paris VII in 2000. He then joined a French academic laboratory belonging to the French National Institute of Scientific and Medical Research (INSERM) where he focused his scientific efforts on the elucidation of the migratory pathways of Treg cells in normal and pathological conditions.
Pascal Dao
PhD., Head of preclinical development
Dr. Pascal Dao is a highly experienced medicinal chemist and drug hunter with a wealth of knowledge and expertise in the field of drug discovery and development. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Paris V in 2013. With nearly 10 years of experience in the academic and industry, including 4 years as a Senior Scientist at Yukin Therapeutics, Pascal brings a multidisciplinary background in chemistry, biochemistry, and biology to his role as Head of Preclinical Development.
In this position, Pascal is responsible for overseeing the preclinical stage of drug development, from hit to lead identification to target ID and on-target assay development. He has extensive experience in setting up high throughput screening cascades and in vivo validation and is committed to ensuring that the preclinical stage of drug development is executed efficiently and effectively.
Dr. Dao is a skilled problem-solver and an effective communicator, able to collaborate effectively with interdisciplinary teams to achieve shared goals. His passion for drug discovery and his drive to make a positive impact on human health make him a valuable asset to our company and our mission to bring innovative treatments to the market.
Jean-Baptiste Bouin
MSc., MBA, Corporate manager
Jean-Baptiste brings 10 years of experience in the biotech industry. He spends five years as a business developer in the technology transfer field on the academic side and in the industry. These experiences allowed him to develop his abilities to handle complex negotiations, perform investment analysis, carry on legal reviews and set up intellectual property strategies. Following that he oriented his career toward entrepreneurship with the set-up of a subsidiary for an AgTech company. Further to the latest he worked closely with AdBio Partners with which he created TridekOne which he accompanied until the end of the seed round. These positive experiences as a business manager gave him the opportunity to develop his skills in finance, HR, operation management, etc., and led him to join new projects including Yukin therapeutics as a Corporate Manager. Jean-Baptiste holds an engineering degree in biosciences from Paris XII university and he completed his education with an MBA at the Sorbonne business school.
Scientific Advisor
Peter Sennhenn
PhD.
Dr. Peter Sennhenn is a medicinal chemist and drug discovery entrepreneur with more than 25 years of experience in pharmaceutical and biotech industry where he led several medicinal chemistry departments and managed multidisciplinal project teams and discovery programs. His areas of special expertise are in kinase inhibitor discovery, oncology, CNS, epigenetics and redox mechanism-based small molecule drug discovery. Dr. Sennhenn got his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Heidelberg, followed by postdoctoral studies at the Scripps Institute with nobel laureate K. Barry Sharpless. After 10 years at Boehringer Ingelheim in Germany and Austria as a lab and group leader, he built up and headed the medicinal chemistry departments at GPC biotech, Proteros and Bioversys. Dr. Sennhenn is founder of transMedChem Consulting, a preclinical drug discovery consulting company, through which he has supported more than 30 startup and biotech companies in Europe, US and Asia to advance their early-stage drug discovery projects from hit to lead to candidate stage and enabled the identification of 5 clinical drugs. Dr. Sennhenn is a member of the German, Swiss and American Chemical Society.
Stephan Schann
PhD.
Stephan Schann currently serves as VP Research at Domain Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focusing on GPCR and immuno-oncology. From the creation of Domain Therapeutics, he successively occupied growing responsibilities as Head of Research then as Director of Research & Development. Before Domain, Stephan spent 6 years at Faust Pharmaceuticals, a CNS clinical biopharmaceutical company, where he set up the medicinal chemistry activity. Prior to his position at Faust, Stephan was Team Leader at EvotecOAI, Abingdon, UK from 2001 to 2003. Stephan obtained his PhD from University de Strasbourg, France in 2001 working on the synthesis of the first imidazoline I1-selective ligands.
Jorge Kirilovsky
PhD.
Jorge Kirilovsky obtained his PhD in Biochemistry from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and conducted a postdoctoral training in Molecular Neurobiology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. He worked in GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) France R&D for 30 years. Starting as an investigator, he became Head of Department and in 2006 Jorge was appointed, VP and Head of the Drug Discovery Centre of GSK in France. He directed a group of a hundred biologists, chemists, pharmacokineticists and clinicians working together to identify new candidate drugs for development. The discovery of Tadalafil (CialisTM) for the treatment of erectile dysfunction and the first epigenetic drug that reached clinical development are among the main contributions of his team. Jorge was involved in the identification and selection of about 20 clinical drug candidates in immuno-inflammation, cardiovascular and oncology areas. At present Jorge is a Senior Consultant in Drug Discovery. As such, he is a member of the Health Expert Committee of BPI Large Ventures and he is part of the Investment Committee of the SATT Paris-Saclay. In addition, he supports Yukin Therapeutics and Ribonexus. He previously acted as CSO of Tridek-One Therapeutics and was a scientific advisor of Sulficon and Urania Therapeutics.
Antoine Italiano
MD. PhD.
Pr Antoine Italiano is the head of the Early Phase Trials and Sarcoma Units at Institut Bergonié (Bordeaux, France) and of Precision Medicine Program at Gustave Roussy (Villejuif, France). Pr Italiano trained as a medical oncologist and obtained the Best Medical Thesis Price from Nice Medical School in 2005. He gained a PhD degree in Molecular Aspects of Cell Biology in 2008 and completed his training with a post-doctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Cristina Antonescu at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer center, New York, USA. His main research interests are in early clinical development, phase I trials across solid tumors, immune-oncology, pharmacodynamic biomarkers, early phase II trials and sarcoma. He is also involved in translational research aspects related to sensitivity and resistance to targeted therapies, notably in soft-tissue sarcoma models. Pr Italiano has been the Principal Investigator of more than 50 phase I trials during the past 5 years as well as a dozen phase II and phase III trials in sarcomas. Pr Italiano is member of ASCO, AACR, and ESMO. He is peer reviewer for several oncology journals and has contributed to over 400 peer-reviewed publications, including publications as first or last author in the Lancet Oncology, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Jama Oncology, Annals of Oncology and Clinical Cancer Research.
Scientific founders
Thierry Passeron
MD, PhD.
Thierry Passeron is Professor and chair of Dermatology in the University hospital of Nice. He also heads the laboratory INSERM U1065 team 12, C3M, dedicated to the study of molecular mechanisms involved in pigmentation and melanoma. He heads the University laser center in Nice. He is president of the Department of Clinical Research and Innovation of Nice University hospital and vice-president of Côte d’Azur University. He has 12 international patents and more than 300 publications in scientific journals (h-index 54). He is the co-founder of YUKIN therapeutics. His fields of research include pigmentary disorders (including vitiligo and melasma), melanoma, hidradenitis suppurativa, and alopecia areata.
Rachid Benhida
PhD.
Rachid Benhida is DR CNRS, Deputy-Director of the ICN Institute and leader of Bioactive Molecules team. He received his Ph. D. from the University-Paris XI (1992). After three years postdoc (Hoechst/Roussel-Uclaf, Germany and “Institut Curie-Paris”, 1994), he joined the “Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles” as “ANRS young research award” and as CNRS researcher in the same year (1995). He moved to the University of Nice in 2002. His current researches focus on the development of synthetic methods and their applications in nucleic acid chemistry, chemical biology and the development of new strategies to overcome drug resistance using small molecules (specific targeting of nucleic acids and CSCs, identification and validation of new targets, etc.)
Board
Alain Huriez
MD.
Alain brings over 30 years of experience in life sciences and finance. He started his career as a General Practitioner (GP) and then spent ten years in biotechnology drug development and regulatory strategy as vice president of Quintiles (IQVIA) Europe. Prior to joining VC firm Advent Life Sciences in 2012, and co-founding AdBio Partners (formerly Advent France Biotechnology) in 2016, Alain was a life science entrepreneur, associate partner at Truffle Capital, and CEO of Neovacs (vaccines) and TcLand-Effimune (now OSE-immuno) (molecular diagnostics, biologics). He has successfully founded five French biotechnology companies as well as the European PErsonalized MEDicine association (EPEMED), acting as chairman.
Alain was also the first investor in Orphalan, a commercial-stage EU/US company in rare diseases. He has been chairman of the board since 2015. Alain is a Medical doctor, holds an MBA and a Master in health economics from La Sorbonne University, France.
Arnaud Foussat
PhD.
Dr. Arnaud Foussat, Chief Executive Officer brings to Yukin Therapeutics over 18 years of experience in immunotherapy research and development. Arnaud Foussat is also Operating Partner at AdBio partners. Arnaud Spend two years as Chief Operating Officer at Yukin Therapeutics, launching the company operations before taking the CEO role. Before joining Yukin Therapeutics, Arnaud was Chief Scientific Officer at TxCell (acquired by Sangamo Therapeutics in 2018) and developed the first generation of cell therapy products using Regulatory T cells (Treg cells) and launched the first program on CAR-engineered Treg cells. Arnaud spent 12 years at TxCell, managing the cell therapy research and process development with a strong involvement in regulatory affairs and corporate development. Graduate of Institut Pasteur of Paris, Arnaud Foussat obtained his Ph.D. degree of Immunology from the University of Paris VII in 2000. He then joined a French academic laboratory belonging to the French National Institute of Scientific and Medical Research (INSERM) where he focused his scientific efforts on the elucidation of the migratory pathways of Treg cells in normal and pathological conditions.