Management Team
ANDREA VAN ELSAS, PhD
VP Research
Andrea van Elsas has over 30 years’ experience in the life science and biotech industry. Andrea acts as advisor for AM-Pharma since 2011 and is responsible for research including alliance discovery with biotech and academia.
In addition to AM-Pharma, Andrea is Chief Scientific Officer of Aduro Biotech, Inc. Prior to its acquisition by Aduro in 2015, he co-founded BioNovion focused on the development of therapeutic antibodies in the field of immune oncology. From 1999 to 2011, he held various positions at Organon in Oss, the Netherlands, and Cambridge, Massachusetts (acquired by Schering-Plough Corporation in 2007 and later by Merck & Co.). As Director of Tumor Immunology, he ran the immune oncology portfolio and led the anti-PD1 program that later became known as pembrolizumab.
Andrea obtained his PhD at Leiden University in 1996 and subsequently worked as a postdoc at UC Berkeley in the lab of Nobel laureate Jim Allison on the application and mode-of-action of anti-CTLA-4 to treat cancer.
