Nordic Life Science 1
- THE LATEST LIFE SCIENCE CAREER NEWS FROM THE NO
RDIC REGION IN A NEW JOB Kristen Harting Chief Medical Officer at SynAct Pharma Per Norlén Chief Executive Officer of WntResearch Ola Sandborgh Chief Executive Officer of Lipum KRISTEN HARTING will lead all clinical development and medical affairs at the company. She joins SynAct following more than three decades within big pharma and biotech as a Chief Medical Officer (CMO), including at Alzinova and Tetra Pharm Technologies. “I am pleased to join SynAct and get the opportunity to work with the team. My strength is in clinical development and safety, and I have worked with many indications and compounds, including rheumatoid arthritis and other immunological disorders. Supporting SynAct with its work with resomelagon and its TXP peptide agonists is a perfect fit for me,” says Harting. Kristen Harting earned her MD from the University of Copenhagen and her Executive MBA from the Copenhagen Business School. PER NORLÉN comes most recently from the role of CEO of Evaxion Biotech. During the period 2015–2021, he was CEO of Alligator Bioscience, where he was also Medical Director and Development Manager. He has also worked in various leading positions in drug development, including at AstraZeneca. He trained as a doctor at Lund University, did his doctorate in preclinical pharmacology, and then became a docent in clinical pharmacology. He is also a specialist in clinical pharmacology and has long-term and very successful experience in the clinical development of cancer drugs. He also has many years of experience in business development and has been responsible for several large cooperation agreements between biotech companies and big pharma. OLA SANDBORGH has held leading roles in different commercial, innovation and business development positions in companies such as Pfizer, Sanofi Pasteur MSD, and most recently as Vice President Immunology & Specialty Care at Swedish Orphan Biovitrum. He has been leading global cross-functional teams as well as coordinating partnerships with numerous companies. “Lipum is a unique company and a very interesting innovative player in the anti-inflammatory field. With a strong scientific background revealing that the novel target molecule BSSL plays an important role in inflammation, Lipum is on an exciting journey. I look forward to leading the Lipum team on this path of strong innovation and development to the benefit of patients with inflammatory disorders,” says Sandborgh. Satu Palva Director of HiLIFE Neuroscience Center SATU PALVA has been appointed the new Director of the Neuroscience Center (NC) within HiLIFE. She has been involved in the unit’s leadership for a long time as the Vice Director. Her research group on systems neuroscience studies emergent dynamic interactions across the brain and how they give rise to cognitive functions and behaviors. She has also held a professor position at the University of Glasgow since 2018. “Fast advances in neurotechnology and computational methodologies, in combination with multidisciplinary research in NC, hold great promise for major breakthroughs in neuroscience that may also have large societal impact by enabling accurate and personalized diagnostics, prediction modelling and novel interventions for brain diseases,” says Palva. 62 | NORDICLIFESCIENCE.ORG