Chief Executive Officer
Chief Scientific Officer
Senior Scientific Advisor
Co-founder
Co-founder
Investor
790 Memorial Drive Suite 300, Cambridge, MA 02139 | Wagistrasse 13, 8952 Schlieren, Switzerland
Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Deehan has been the Chief Executive Officer of Vivtex since February 2023. She is a PhD qualified biotechnology and pharmaceutical professional with >20 years of drug development and commercialization experience. She obtained her PhD from the Faculty of Medicine at Glasgow University, and subsequently spent 8 years in academic research before moving into the bioharma industry in 2001. During her early days in industry, she was responsible for high throughput screening technologies and activities at Organon Laboratories. Maureen has gained expertise in all stages of the drug development cycle from discovery to product commercial launch, across a broad range of therapeutic areas, including CNS, Oncology, Immunology, Cardiovascular and Women’s Health. Her last years have been spent in global corporate development roles at Novimmune SA and Nordic Nanovector ASA where she has gained a successful track record in business development and deal-making, for product and technology platform transactions, with a range of companies, including Genentech and Shire.
Thomas von Erlach
Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. von Erlach co-founded Vivtex and joined as its Chief Scientific Officer when Vivtex was formed as a MIT spin-off in 2018. Prior to that he led the interdisciplinary efforts around gastrointestinal model systems for oral drug delivery applications in the Laboratory of Prof. Robert Langer and Prof. Giovanni Traverso, at MIT. Thomas obtained a PhD from Imperial College London in Bioengineering and BSc and MSc in Biochemistry and Biotechnology from ETH in Switzerland. His research interests include advanced in vitro model systems for drug development, oral drug delivery and gastrointestinal pharmacology. His work is published in several high impact journals including Nature Materials, Nature Biomedical Engineering and Nature Communications.
James Wright
Senior Scientific Advisor
Dr. Wright joined Vivtex in 2018 as a core member of the Vivtex Executive Management Team and Senior Scientific Advisor. Prior to that he held various executive and leadership positions in pharma and biotech companies, including Vice President of Development at Infinity Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Vice President of Pharmaceutical Development at Millennium Pharmaceuticals and Senior Vice President of Development at Alkermes plc. In addition, he was a Distinguished Scientist at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals. Furthermore, Dr Wright was co-Founder and Chairman of the Scientific & Clinical Advisory Board of the drug delivery company Civitas Therapeutics that was sold for $525 million in 2014. He received his Ph.D. in Pharmacy from the University of Wisconsin and B.A. and degrees in Biology and Chemistry from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Robert Langer
Co-founder
Dr. Langer is the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT. He is heralded as one of the most prolific inventors in the history of medicine. He has written over 1,400 articles and has over 1,300 issues and pending patents worldwide. Dr. Langer’s patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 350 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies. He is the most cited engineer in history and is co-founder of over 40 biotech companies. He is a co-founder of Vivtex and also serves as head of its board of directors.
Co-founder
Dr. Traverso is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT and a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He received his BA from Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK, and his PhD at Johns Hopkins University. He subsequently completed medical school at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is a renowned expert in oral drug delivery and co-founder of several biotech companies. He is a co-founder of Vivtex and serves as a board member.
Jack Barbut
Investor
Mr. Barbut is a 30+ years life science executive with extensive experience in management, R&D, business development and sales. He served as CEO of Novimmune from 2000-2016 where he built the organization from ground up to become a 120 employee fully integrated Swiss biotech corporation specializing in Immunology and Immunology-Oncology. Previously, he served as CEO of Synarc, a San Francisco based, global 150 employee, centralized imaging center, for clinical research. He was also formerly the founder, Vice Chairman and President of Chrysalis, a Nasdaq traded global full service CRO. Jack is a Swiss citizen and graduate of EPFL, Lausanne, in System Engineering.