Together we are transforming the future of TPD

Our people are at the heart of our success

Our commitment to transforming patients’ lives begins with our people.

At Amphista we are driven by a desire to make an impact and together we have created a dynamic, supportive and enabling culture where collaboration and innovation are championed, and success is celebrated. This empowers employees across all levels to grow and harness their scientific expertise to deliver the next generation of TPD.

Our Leadership team

Supported by leading life science investors

Grow with us

We are focused on building a team with the right people in the right roles, with the right skill set to accelerate our mission to change patient lives.

We recognise and value the unique skills, perspectives and contributions of all employees. Our strong team ethic and open and honest culture provides ample opportunity for growth and development, with all employees able to develop their scientific understanding of TPD and learn from our experienced leadership team.

Outside of driving innovation in TPD, employees are encouraged to engage in an array of team activities and initiatives that make Amphista a vibrant and fun place to work.

View our available careers

Our employee-led values make Amphista a great place to work

See our stories

Photo of Amphista employee Anna Tasegian – Senior Scientist, Biology

Anna Tasegian – Senior Scientist, Biology

Photo of Amphista employee Jack Miles – Scientist, Biology

Jack Miles – Scientist, Biology

Photo of Amphista employee David McGarry – Principal Medicinal Chemist

David McGarry – Principal Medicinal Chemist

Photo of Amphista employee Ivan del Barco Barrantes – Principal Scientist

Ivan del Barco Barrantes – Principal Scientist

Photo of Amphista employee Alice Fletcher – Principal Scientist

Alice Fletcher – Principal Scientist

Photo of Amphista employee James Lynch – Director of Oncology

James Lynch – Director of Oncology

Photo of Amphista employee Liliana Greger – Senior Director of Bioinformatics

Liliana Greger – Senior Director of Bioinformatics

Our employee-led values make Amphista a great place to work

See our stories

Pauline Drouhin – Senior Medicinal Chemist

James Lynch – Director of Oncology

David McGarry – Principal Medicinal Chemist

Ivan Del Barco Barrantes

Ivan del Barco Barrantes – Principal Scientist

Jack Miles – Scientist, Biology

Marta Carrara – Associate Director Target Discovery & Validation

Anna Tasegian – Senior Scientist, Biology

Tarun Narwani – Senior Computational Structural Biologist (AI/ML)

Alice Fletcher – Principal Scientist

Antony Mattessich

Chief Executive Officer

Antony is an experienced CEO with over 30 years’ experience in the life science industry. He has an impressive track record in progressing programs from discovery, through clinical development and commercial success, and strong capital markets experience.

Antony has held several senior executive positions where he was instrumental in developing medicines that translate innovative science into meaningful clinical outcomes for patients, with extensive experience in CNS, haemato-oncology, immunology, and metabolics. Most recently, he was President and CEO of Nasdaq-listed Ocular Therapeutix (OCUL), where he launched the company’s lead asset and brought its potential blockbuster in Wet Age-Related Macular Degeneration (wet-AMD) from pre-clinical development into active enrolment in Phase 3.

Prior to Ocular, Antony was Managing Director of Mundipharma and has held senior positions at Novartis and Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Antony holds a BA from the University of California at Berkeley and a Masters in International affairs from Columbia University.

Martin Pass PhD

Chief Development Officer

Martin has over 30 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry spanning early drug discovery through Ph2 clinical development. Martin began his career as a medicinal chemist at Glaxo/GlaxoWellcome helping progress multiple candidates into clinical development in the Cardiovascular, CNS and Gastrointestinal therapeutic areas. Martin moved to AstraZeneca, where he transitioned to Program Leadership in the Oncology group, nominating numerous Oncology drug candidates into the clinic and led successful clinical development efforts through to Ph3 transition.

Most recently Martin was Vice President, Head of Projects and member of AstraZeneca’s Early Oncology Leadership Team, with a focus on small molecule late discovery and early development efforts.

Martin received a BSc in Chemistry from the University of Manchester and a PhD in Organic Chemistry from Imperial College London. He followed this with a period of post-doctoral research at the University of Virginia. He is co-author on over 60 patents and peer-reviewed publications.

Louise Modis PhD

Chief Scientific Officer

Louise is an accomplished scientific leader with over 20 years’ experience working in Biotech and Pharma in both the US and Europe, in target selection and preclinical and clinical advancement of small and large molecules across multiple therapy areas (incl. Immunology, Inflammation, Oncology and Immuno-Oncology). Most recently Louise was Chief Scientific Officer at Mogrify where she oversaw all research and portfolio decisions. Prior to this she was Vice President of Immunology Research at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) where she led the generation and advancement of a pipeline of assets from target identification through to clinical proof-of-concept studies.

Formerly in her career, Louise has led research teams at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals and Millennium Pharmaceuticals (now Takeda), as well as represented GSK on the board of Sitryx.

Louise has a BSc in Biotechnology awarded by the National University of Ireland, Galway, and a PhD in molecular and cell biology for work carried out at EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany on Developmental Immunology, has postdoctoral research experience at Harvard, and has over 30 peer reviewed publications.

Giles Brown PhD

Senior VP Chemistry

Giles has over 20 years’ experience working in Biotech and has established a proven track record in delivering small molecule preclinical and clinical candidates across multiple therapeutic areas (incl. CNS, Inflammation, Oncology and Immuno-Oncology). Most recently Giles was Senior Vice President, Medicinal Chemistry at Dunad Therapeutics where he developed the company’s novel tunable mono-valent degrader chemistry platform for drug discovery. Prior to this he was Vice President of Medicinal Chemistry at OMass Therapeutics where he contributed to building the organisation and developing the company’s native mass spectrometry platform for drug discovery.

Formerly in his career, Giles was Head of Medicinal Chemistry at Sosei Heptares and helped develop the StaR^® structural biology platform as a new approach to structure-based drug design for GPCRs.

Giles received a BSc in Chemistry and a PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of Bristol, he followed this with a period of post-doctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania. He also has an MBA from Henley Business School. Giles is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and an author of over 70 patents and peer reviewed publications.

Joshua Brumm

Chairman

Josh is a General Partner at Forbion. He has extensive experience in building and leading companies in biotech and healthcare. Previously, Josh was the president and CEO of Dyne Therapeutics. He led Dyne through its initial public offering on Nasdaq in 2020, and advanced two rare muscle disease programs into clinical trials. Prior to Dyne, he held leadership roles at several other biotechs, including Proteolix, Pharmacyclics and ZELTIQ Aesthetics, all of which were acquired by large pharmaceutical companies.

Earlier, he served as chief operating officer and chief financial officer of Kaleido Biosciences, where he led the company’s financings including its IPO and helped bring the lead program into Phase 2 development. Prior to joining Kaleido, Josh was COO and CFO at Versartis, where he spearheaded the company’s financial strategy including the successful completion of its IPO, played an integral role in product strategy, and helped negotiate the company’s first product partnership. His previous roles include serving as executive vice president of finance and principal financial officer at Pharmacyclics; CFO at ZELTIQ Aesthetics, where he led the company through its IPO, led the international product launch for CoolSculpting and also served in corporate development; and director of finance at Proteolix, Inc., assisting in the sale of the company to Onyx Pharmaceuticals. He also held investment banking positions at Citigroup Global Markets, Inc. and Morgan Stanley.

Over the course of his career, Josh has raised ~$2.5 billion in capital. Josh holds a B.A. in business administration from the University of Notre Dame.

Dominic Schmidt PhD

Non-Executive Director

Dominic joined Advent Life Sciences in April 2022 with a background in biochemistry, genomics, molecular oncology, strategy consulting and life science venture capital.

Prior to joining Advent, he spent eight years as a Partner in the investment team of Syncona, a publicly listed healthcare investment company. During his time there he was involved in the founding, funding and building of several life science businesses and served on the Boards of Anaveon, Orbit Biomedical (merged with Gyroscope), Gyroscope Therapeutics (acquired by Novartis for up to $1.5 billion), Purespring Therapeutics and Forcefield Therapeutics.

After gaining a German Diplom Degree in Biochemistry from the Free University of Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics he received a PhD from the Department of Oncology at the University of Cambridge. Dominic was a Cancer Research UK scholar and his research has been published in Cell, Nature and Science. His PhD thesis was recognized with the Pontecorvo and Science & SciLife Lab Prizes.

Rogier Rooswinkel PhD

Non-Executive Director

Rogier is Partner at Forbion where he is responsible for evaluation and structuring of new investment opportunities across all disease areas with an emphasis on oncology. He currently serves as a board member for Amphista, Catalym and Achilles and as a board observer for Enterprise, Prilenia and Escalier

Prior to joining Forbion, Rogier worked as a post-doc at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI), division of immunology. In 2013 he received his PhD degree Cum Laude from the University of Amsterdam for the work he performed at the NKI. Before that, he received a Master’s degree in Oncology at the VU university in Amsterdam, NL.

Stefan Luzi PhD

Non-Executive Director

Stefan Luzi joined Gilde Healthcare in 2015. He is focusing on venture and growth capital investments in the biopharmaceutical sector. He led several investments and currently represents Gilde on the boards of Amphista Therapeutics Ltd., Lava Therapeutics B.V. and Lumicks B.V.

Prior to joining Gilde, Stefan worked at Merck KGaA where he completed international assignments in the Global Business Intelligence and M Ventures divisions. Additionally, he was involved in various consulting projects spanning the pharmaceutical and chemical departments at Merck and co-moderated Merck Serono’s innovation competitions.

Stefan received a B.Sc. in Biology and M.Sc. in Biotechnology from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) and his MPhil in Bioscience Enterprise from the University of Cambridge. He completed his Ph.D. with Nobel Laureate Sir Gregory Winter at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where he developed a bicyclic peptide-based drug discovery platform.

Christian Jung PhD

Non-Executive Director

Christian is a Partner at SV Health Investors, investing out of the Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF). He currently represents the fund on the Boards of Amphista Therapeutics Ltd., Harness Therapeutics Ltd. and LoQus23 Therapeutics Ltd. Prior to joining SV, Christian held roles with Wellington Partners Life Sciences and High-Tech Gründerfonds, Europe’s leading seed fund with € 1.3bn under management. There, Christian structured and completed the seed- and early-stage investments in nine life sciences companies, including Amal Therapeutics SA (acquired by Boehringer Ingelheim in 2019 for up to € 325m), Cunesoft GmbH (acquired by Phlexglobal in 2020 for an undisclosed amount) and Rigontec GmbH (acquired by MSD in 2017 for up to €464m).

Christian was awarded a PhD with distinction in Medical Science and Technology for his work on patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cells and obtained his MSc degree in Molecular Biotechnology, both from the Technical University of Munich. The key articles generated in the context of his PhD were published in the New England Journal of Medicine, EMBO Molecular Medicine and FASEB Journal and have so far been cited more than 1,000 times.

Bart Dzikowski

Non-Executive Director

Bart is a Managing Director at the Novartis Venture Fund and its Head of Transactions & Legal based in Basel, Switzerland. He currently serves on the board of Enterprise Therapeutics Holdings and UZH Life Sciences Fund and was previously on the board of Oculis (until its NASDAQ IPO), Inflazome (until it was acquired by Roche) and Enterprise Therapeutics (until its TMEM16A program was acquired by Roche).

Prior to joining NVF, Bart held various senior roles in Novartis’ Corporate Legal M&A and BD&L groups. Before joining Novartis in 2009, he was with the Investment Banking Division of Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York and, before that, he was an attorney with the Corporate/M&A Group at the law firm of Allen & Overy LLP in New York. Bart holds Juris Doctor and Bachelor of Civil Law degrees from McGill Law School in Canada and is a member of the New York State Bar.