Stephan Jenn, President

Stephan Jenn is president of AliX Pharma since March 2008. He has been co-founding Novalyst in 2002 and PhytoDia in 2006. Currently he is heading all three companies : Novalyst, PhytoDia and AliX Pharma. Before, Stephan Jenn was Vice President of Corporate Development at Graffinity Pharmaceuticals AG (now Santhera Pharmaceuticals, Heidelberg, Germany). Previously, he worked in international corporate finance as Engagement Director for Mazars in Paris then in Frankfurt. Stephan Jenn is a graduate from l'École Supérieure de Commerce de Rouen and received his MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Business School.

Denis Zeyer, Ph.D., CEO

He earned an MSc in biological crystallography and NMR from Louis Pasteur University (Strasbourg, France). In 2002 he obtained his Ph.D. in protein X-ray crystallography under the supervision of Dr Jean-Paul Renaud and Dr Dino Moras (IGBMC / Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology, Strasbourg, France) performing structural studies on the PPARs family by X-ray crystallography for a major pharmaceutical company. In 2003, upon graduation, Dr Zeyer joined  to build the structural biology group and launch the research services business. In that capacity he has been instrumental in developing the organization at AliX and in successfully leading the company’s business development efforts. In 2008 he was appointed Chief Executive Officer of AliX and subsequently of NovAliX.

Jean-Paul Renaud, Ph.D., Co-Founder & CSO

Laureate of the "Concours national d'aide à la création d'entreprises de technologies innovantes" in 2002, Jean-Paul Renaud was the creator and first CEO-CSO of AliX (2002-2008), where he implemented the original combination of X-ray crystallography and mass spectrometry screening. Before founding AliX, he was a CNRS Research Associate (1988-2000) and then a CNRS Research Director (2000-2002) at IGBMC. Jean-Paul Renaud has published more than 40 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals and is an inventor on 3 patents. He holds a PhD in organic chemistry from Université Paris 6 (1986) and was a post-doctoral fellow with Dr. Kiyoshi Nagai at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK (1987-1988). He also obtained the Engineering Diploma from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris (ENSCP) in 1982. After a short come-back at IGBMC (2008-2009), Jean-Paul Renaud is now the CSO of NovAliX.

Valérie Vivat, Ph.D., Head of MS-Technology Platform

She earned an MSc and a Ph.D. in physiology of reproduction from the University Pierre and Marie Curie (Paris, France). In 1992 she joined Roussel Uclaf (Romainville, France) working on structural determinants for the steroid receptors hormonal selectivity. In 1994, upon completion of this post-doctoral training, she started her professional career in Pr. Pierre Chambon’s laboratory at the IGBMC (Institute of Genetic and Molecular and Cellular Biology, Strasbourg, France) studying structure function relationships of nuclear hormone receptors. Subsequently in 1998 she joined Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute (Princeton, USA) as research investigator in the endocrine oncology department. In 2004 Dr Vivat joined AliX to head the molecular and cellular biology platforms and develop the non-covalent MS-platform. As of today, she is co-author of 23 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Fabrice Ciesielski, Ph.D., Contract research manager

He earned an MSc in molecular biology from Louis Pasteur University (Strasbourg, France). In 2006 he obtained his Ph.D. in protein X-ray crystallography under the supervision of Dr Dino Moras (IGBMC / Institute of Genetic and Molecular and Cellular Biology, Strasbourg, France) working on the structure-function relationship of nuclear receptors, especially the Vitamin D Receptor (VDR) and the Retinoid X Receptor (RXR). In 2003 he solved the first wild type VDR ligand binding domain structures and subsequently began a collaboration with Galderma. His work appeared in 4 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals. In 2006 Dr CIesielski joined AliX as protein crystallographer. In 2008 he was appointed as responsible for the biochemistry and protein crystallography group and supervising the external research collaborations.