Speakers
Anne Horgan
Elisa Petris
Lisa Deschamps
Panel session
Anne Horgan is an investor focusing on biotech and biopharma financing.
Prior to joining CIC, Anne was a Partner at Advent France Biotechnology (now AdBio Partners), a Paris-based venture capital firm specialising in Life Sciences seed investments, and Senior Associate at Sofinnova Partners.
Anne has over 20 years’ experience in the Life Sciences sector, acquired as Business Development Executive at Cancer Research Technology and Senior Medicinal Chemist at Cambridge Biotechnology (now part of Benevolent AI).
Anne’s experience includes equity financing, technology transfer and scouting, business development and biotech R&D.
Anne carried out postdoctoral research at Yale University after her PhD in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of Bristol. She holds a diplôme d’ingénieur (Chemistry) from the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Rouen, authored several peer-reviewed papers and is an inventor on eight patent families.
Elisa is a Partner of Syncona Investment Management Limited.
She is a Director on the Board of Quell Therapeutics, Beacon Therapeutics and Forcefield Therapeutics and was previously on the Board of former portfolio companies Blue Earth Diagnostics and Neogene, and of current portfolio company Achilles Therapeutics. She was closely involved in the foundation of Quell, Blue Earth, Achilles and Beacon including their operational and strategic set-up.
Previously, she was a Senior Associate at Michel Dyens & Co. working on transactions covering the healthcare space, and a member of the Life Science team at L.E.K. Consulting based in London. While at L.E.K. she worked on projects for biotech, pharma and private equity clients. Elisa has a PhD in Molecular Biology from Imperial College and an MBA from London Business School.
Lisa Deschamps is Chief Executive Officer and Executive Board Member at AviadoBio.
Prior to joining, Lisa served as Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer of Novartis Gene Therapies, a unit of Novartis where she was responsible for strategic planning and worldwide commercialization of the pipeline and in-line assets across the extensive gene therapy portfolio; including the world-wide commercialization of Zolgensma. Her career at Novartis spanned for more than twenty-five years, during which she brought products from the clinic to commercialization across many therapeutic areas, including highly specialized, rare and ultra-rare disease areas and has led teams across U.S, Europe, LatCan and Asia/Pac in strategic, functional and general management roles.
Lisa served on several executive teams across commercial and development within Novartis and serves as a Non-Executive Director for VERONA Pharma and is a Strategic Advisor, Non-Executive Director for Reset Pharma and on the Board of the Alliance of Regenerative Medicine.
Lisa is a visionary and passionate leader driven by a strong belief that those rallied around a common vision can achieve the extraordinary together – and has proven that throughout her career. She and her teams have fostered a strong, people and purpose driven culture built on productive curiosity, courage, collaboration and transparency, while serving patients and delivering growth far exceeding expectations.
She has garnered many industry awards and honors and has a number of philanthropic interests. Lisa has an MBA in General Management from NYU Stern School of Business and a BBA in marketing from IONA College, Hagan School of Business.
Dr Natalie Pankova is currently managing healthcare investments at Zinc VC and is an experienced startup operator and investor working at the intersection of life science and advanced technologies in health. She also holds a Board role in Novai, a Series A stage Biotech, and is an expert advisor and evaluator at various European Commission funds and initiatives.
Over the last decade, Natalie has worked with dozens of startup companies, led teams in drug discovery and development, health applications and machine learning, and built novel technologies from the ground up, across UK, Europe and North America. Natalie holds a PhD from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto.