People

Hubert Besner is a partner and co-founder of m law group. He focuses his practice on corporate matters, M&A and technology transactions. His German, US and international clients include public and private companies as well as investors and venture capital firms in the life sciences and biotechnology business. In cooperation with the renowned legal US-publisher “Best Lawyer”, the Handelsblatt has been listed Hubert Besner as one of the best lawyers in Germany 2015 in the category Corporate Law.

Justin Duckworth has spent the last 16 years working for venture capital funds within life sciences, currently as Managing General Partner at HS LifeSciences. Justin is also a member of the board of Ethris GmbH, Germany. Prior to HS LifeSciences, Justin was a Partner at Nomura Phase4 Ventures in London, an investment advisor at HBM Partners in Zurich and a Vice President in the Private Equity group of Dresdner Kleinwort Capital in London. Prior to 2000, Justin worked in a number of roles within Arthur Andersen in London and gained his ACA qualifications. He is a member of the ICAEW and has an MA (Oxon) in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford, UK. 

Richard Edelson is Lerner Professor and Chairman of the Department of Dermatology at the Yale University School of Medicine (YSM). From 2003 to 2009, he was Physician-in-Chief and Director of the NIH-designated Yale University Comprehensive Cancer Center. From 2000-2003, he was YSM Deputy Dean for Clinical Affairs, overseeing academic activities in all clinical departments. He introduced and developed the concept that Cutaneous T Cell Lymphoma is a malignancy of skin-homing CD4 cells with biologic properties that explain the distinctive clinical features and offer therapeutic targets. He invented Extracorporeal Photopheresis (ECP), the first FDA approved cellular immunotherapy for any cancer, which is now regularly administered at >300 medical universities throughout the USA and Europe.  His team discovered that ECP’s mechanism of action involves physiologic production of dendritic antigen presenting cells. His licensure of ECP to Johnson&Johnson, led to establishment of the J&J subsidiary Therakos, which was recently sold to Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals.
Dr. Edelson has received the Dermatolology Foundation’s 2014 Discovery Award, the 2012 Castle/Connolly USA National Physician of the Year, and special recognition awards from the American Cancer Society, the Leukemia Lymphoma Society and Yale. Following his Yale MD, he clinically trained at the University of Chicago and Harvard and was an NIH Immunology fellow. Before joining the Yale faculty, Dr. Edelson was Professor and Director of the Cancer Immunology Program at Columbia University. He has authored more than 200 publications.

Adrian Hayday is Kay Glendinning Professor of Immunobiology at King’s College London; co-lead of the Clinical Academic Grouping in Genetics Rheumatology, Immunology, Infection, and Dermatology at Kings’ affiliated hospitals; and a Senior Group Leader at the London Research Institute, Cancer Research UK. He graduated in biochemistry from Cambridge; earned a PhD in virology from London University; and undertook post-doctoral training at M.I.T., before his appointment to the Yale University faculty, where he rose to Full-Professor and was awarded the DeVane Medal, Yale’s highest honor for scholarship and teaching. He returned to restructure immunology at King’s in 1998. He co-discovered the “gamma-delta” T cell antigen receptor, provoking widespread interest in immune cell function within tissues, and tumor immune surveillance. His active research team has published almost 200 papers, with 33 published in cross-disciplinary journals, Nature, Science, Cell, or Proceedings of the National Academy. He won the King’s College Award for Business in 2009; has served on numerous scientific advisory and investor advisory boards, and has chaired funding panels for the Welcome Trust and the American Cancer Society.

Michael Girardi, MD, is Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Dermatology at the Yale School of Medicine, and Director of the Yale-New Haven Hospital and Smilow Cancer Center’s Photopheresis and Phototherapy Centers. He graduated from Brown University with a combined degree with Biology and Computer Science, and received his M.D. with the Honors Thesis Award from the Yale School of Medicine. During more than 15 years leading an NCI-funded research program at Yale, his laboratory is credited with major contributions to our understanding of regulation of cutaneous immunology, cutaneous carcinogenesis, and cutaneous lymphoma. Specifically, the Girardi lab has elucidated roles for gamma-delta T cells, NKG2D ligands, and Langerhans cells in cutaneous biology and skin cancer development and progression. He actively collaborates with the Department of Biomedical Engineering on developing nanoparticle-based skin delivery systems, and the Department of Genetics to identify mutational drivers of cutaneous T cell lymphoma (CTCL).  Dr. Girardi’s clinical expertise is in the treatment of CTCL, skin cancer including malignant melanoma, graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), and autoimmune disorders including lupus erythematous and scleroderma.  He is an active member of the ASCI, AAD, and SID, and has published 100+ articles including in the high-impact Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Experimental Medicine, and the New England Journal of Medicine.

Guenter has spent the last 20 years in biotechnology start-up companies, currently as CEO for Transimmune AG, Duesseldorf. He graduated in chemistry at Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, before joining Nobel laureate Manfred Eigen at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany, and earning a Ph.D. in physical chemistry at Dr. Eigen’s laboratory from Technical University Braunschweig. His industrial career started at BASF in the biotechnology division, before he joined the start team of the newly founded Evotec as project manager. Subsequently Guenter became involved in strategic planning and served the company as VP Strategic planning. After Evotec went public, he became involved in spinning out Evotec’s device business as Evotec Technologies and served that company as CBO/CTO until its acquisition by PerkinElmer. After integration of Evotec Technologies into PerkinElmer he joined Scienion as CBO.

Olga graduated in biology from Carleton College, earned a PhD in cell biology from MIT, and undertook post-doctoral training in murine and human immunology with Prof. Adrian Hayday at King’s College London and Cancer Research UK London Research Institute, before joining Transimmune AG. Her previous research focused on understanding early events in the activation of innate and tissue-resident lymphocytes in response to epithelial stress and dysregulation. A more recent project has been the Human Immune Response Dynamics study at King’s College London, which extensively analyzed samples collected from 200 healthy volunteers prior to, and at several time points following, vaccination against H1N1 influenza (swine ‘flu), in order to create a better understanding of the normal human immune response to an immunological challenge.