Olink Appoints New CEO and Expands Board of Directors

UPPSALA, Sweden, 14 September 2011 – Dr. Simon Fredriksson, Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of Olink AB (Olink) has today been promoted to President and CEO of Olink. Simon Fredriksson is taking over from Björn Ekström who has been managing the company since its inception in 2004. At the same time new members of the Board of Directors have been appointed. These changes follow the purchase by Nexttobe AB (nxt2b) of a significant part of the shares in Olink as announced last week, and it is a first step to accelerate the development of Olink. 

“I am very happy to hand over management of Olink to Simon. We have been working side by side for several years and it is with great pleasure I have seen him rapidly develop into a very competent leader and businessman. With his excellent technical and scientific background combined with his eagerness to expand sales and his market insights he is a perfect successor now that I have decided to step down”, says Björn Ekström, retiring President and CEO of Olink and new member of the Olink Board of Directors.

“It is a great honor for me to be entrusted to lead Olink forward in this phase of rapid development. With a strong product portfolio and an exciting pipeline of new business opportunities I am looking forward to realizing the full potential of Olink”, says Simon Fredriksson.

New members of the Board of Directors have also been appointed, and Bengt Ågerup will be the Chairman of the Board. The other members are Olle Kämpe, Håkan Englund, Björn Ekström, Ulf Landegren and Mats Nilsson together forming a strong board with a vast competence and experience from science and technology to rapid sales growth, innovative marketing and global business.

Bengt  Ågerup is a PhD and has held senior positions within Pharmacia and Biomatrix, and he started the company Q-Med that was subsequently sold to Galderma in 2011. Bengt is the founder of nxt2b, Chairman of Stockholm Uppsala Life Science, and a Board Member of the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research.

Ulf Landegren is Professor of Molecular Medicine at Uppsala University. He is co-founder of Olink, and he was PhD supervisor of the other academic founders. He is a fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, fellow of School of Engineering at Tokyo University, and he sits on scientific advisory boards of several companies and research organizations. He is the inventor of 32 patents or applications.

Olle Kämpe is Professor of Molecular Medicine at Uppsala University since 1999 and senior consultant in internal medicine and in endocrinology at the University Hospital in Uppsala.  He is a fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, appointed by the Swedish Research Council to the board of the Swedish Infrastructure for large scale sequencing (SNISS) and scientific adviser part-time to nxt2b.

Håkan Englund has more than 30 years of experience from the life science industry and has held several leading positions at Pharmacia Biotech (currently GE HealthCare) and Phadia. At Phadia he has been responsible for commercialization of new business and product areas such as POC and multiplexing within allergy diagnostics. He is presently board member of Uppsala Bio and Uppsala Chamber of Commerce.

Björn Ekström is co-founder and retiring President and CEO of Olink. He was co-founder and Executive VP of Pyrosequencing AB and part of the IPO team listing the company on Stockholm Stock Exchange in 2000. Prior to that he held several leading positions within Pharmacia Biotech (currently GE HealthCare). Ekström serves on the board of Cobolt AB, Qlinea AB, Sigolis AB, and Halo Genomics AB.

Mats Nilsson is co-founder and has been member of the board since inception. He is professor of Molecular Diagnostics at Uppsala University where he heads a research group developing new analytical tools for research and diagnostics. He has co-founded four biotech start-up companies and is currently on the board of Halo Genomics AB, ELOS AB, and chairs the board of Q-linea AB.

About Olink AB
Olink Bioscience, a company founded by scientists at Uppsala University, is commercializing cutting-edge technologies for analysis of proteins and nucleic acids revealing new insights into basic science, drug development, and diagnostics.  Our products are available worldwide through a network of distributors and through our web shop. The Duolink® product line enables users to visualize and quantify individual proteins, their interactions and modifications, in unmodified cells and tissues. Proseek® is an open assay development reagent kit for analyzing proteins in only 1 µl of serum or plasma sample with high sensitivity.

Olink’s molecular technologies are also commercialized through partnerships with industry leading organizations such as Affymetrix, Life Technologies, and through Olink spin-out companies Halo Genomics and Qlinea. Olink Bioscience was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in Uppsala, Sweden

For more information, please contact
Simon Fredriksson, President and CEO, Olink AB
Phone: +46 18 444 3970
Mobile: +46 76 1169442