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Management    Advisory Board                

Management

Dr. Martin Welschof, CEO and co-founder
Prior to joining Affitech AS, Dr. Welschof was the Director of Technology at Axaron Bioscience AG, Heidelberg, Germany where he joined in 1997 during the Company's start-up phase. From 1999 until 2002, Dr. Welschof led the technology department of Axaron and was responsible for the R&D process related to a large portfolio of cutting-edge technologies in the field of transcription analysis and functional genomics. During a portion of this period Dr. Welschof was an expatriate at the parent company of Axaron Bisoscience, LYNX Therapeutics Inc., Hayward, California, where he was instrumental in co-ordinating the process development of LYNX massive parallel cloning and sequencing technologies MegaClone, MegaSort and MPSS.

Dr. Welschof did his post-doctoral training at the German Cancer Research Center, Department for Recombinant Antibody Technology and at the University of Heidelberg, Department of Transplantation Immunology both in Heidelberg, Germany (1996-1997). Dr. Welschof was part of the core group in Prof. Melvyn Little's laboratory at the German Cancer Research Center during the development of the phage display technology. During that time, Dr. Welschof established several important tools for human antibody discovery. His major contributions included the construction and use of antibody libraries, leading to the discovery of novel potentially therapeutic antibodies. Dr. Welschof earned his Ph.D. in the field of recombinant antibody technology from the University of Bielefeld, Germany in 1996.

Dr. Rathin C. Das, CBO (Affitech Group) and President of Affitech USA Inc.

Dr. Das has more than 17 years of experience from the biotech/pharmaceutical industry, with a particularly detailed knowledge of the therapeutic antibody sector. He has held key scientific and management positions at both multibillion dollar and start-up pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in the U.S. as well as in Europe. In addition to his R&D background, Dr. Das’ expertise also includes business development, market analysis and alliance management in genomics and gene therapy. Dr. Das is the editor of the biotechnology publication, American Biotechnology Laboratory. He has edited a biochemistry monograph issued by the Academic Press, published over 30 articles, and is the author or co-author of D&MD’s market research reports, Display Technologies, Antibody Engineering, and Antibody Therapeutics. He is a past President of the Indiana branch of the American Society for Microbiology, and founded the Indiana Section of the Society for Industrial Microbiology, U.S. Dr. Das has a PhD in bioorganic chemistry as well as an MBA in international marketing.

Hans Petter Tjeldflaat, Director Finance
Hans Petter Tjeldflaat is responsible for the economic and financial activities of the company. He has his background from banking, finance and investments. He received his Master of Business and Economics from the Norwegian School of Management, and his Master of Science in Finance from the University of Wisconsin, USA.

Dr. Michael Braunagel, Director, Strategic Alliances and Licencing and co-founder.
Dr. Braunagel has been instrumental in building up and running the Antibody Discovery group of Affitech, which has successfully generated antibody leads to a wide range of targets, both for in-house development and as collaborative projects with established industrial partners. He took active a part in the early phase of phage display and antibody library development. He was trained in the laboratory of Prof. Little, one of the pioneers in the field of recombinant antibodies, and Braunagel is co-inventor of a significant and pivotal patents related to phagemid display and synthetic antibody libraries. Dr. Braunagel holds a PhD in biology from DKFZ, Heidelberg.