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We continue to expand and welcome Catharina Forzelius as our Program Director
Scandinavian Biopharma continues to expand and strengthens the organisation by recruiting Catharina Forzelius to the new position as Program Director. As the Program Director Catharina will coordinate and lead the development and commercialisation programmes of the company’s ETEC vaccine candidate ETVAX®.
Catharina has extensive experience from positions at pharmaceutical industries as well as different governmental agencies. She has been Group Manager of the unit for Clinical Trials and Licenses at the Swedish Medical Products Agency, Project Manager and Medical Assessor at TLV (The Dental and Pharmaceutical Benefits Agency) and has had different clinical operations positions at Pfizer and GSK.
- I am very excited to join this entrepreneurial company. As the Program Director you really need to be a team player. We all share the same goal, a successful development of the world’s first ETEC vaccine, and to achieve this we need to be aligned and work in cross-functional teams. This is something I really enjoy, and I also look forward to this role since it requires both operational management and strategic oversight, says Catharina.
- I am very pleased to welcome Catharina to our newly created role as Program Director. Her experience of working in and leading both Swedish and international cross-functional teams, in combination with her experience from both the Medical Products Agency and the private sector, will come in very handy, says Björn Sjöstrand, CEO of Scandinavian Biopharma.
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About Scandinavian Biopharma
Scandinavian Biopharma is a research-based specialty biopharma company determined to give people all over the world a longer and better life. Together with researchers at the University of Gothenburg and the international non-profit organization PATH, Scandinavian Biopharma is developing the first vaccine against ETEC which causes diarrhoea in both travellers and endemic populations.
The development project is mainly funded by the EDCTP programme, which is supported under Horizon 2020, the European Union’s (EU) Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, as well as by PATH and the U.S. Army (USAMRAA).
Scandinavian Biopharma also acts as a distributor for a wide range of specialty biopharma products in Europe with a focus on vaccines and immunoglobulins.
About ETEC
Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli, or ETEC, is a major cause of bacterial diarrhoeal disease.
ETEC infections are particularly common in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). In children younger than 5 years, it has been estimated that 1.7 billion episodes of diarrhoea occur annually. ETEC represents a major cause of these episodes and accounts for approximately 400 000 deaths among children living in LMICs. In addition, diarrhoea is associated with an increased risk of stunting (i.e.impaired growth and development). Stunting affects cognitive development which might determine a child’s ability to learn, their educational attainment, and future earnings and it also puts children at risk due to other severe infectious diseases.
ETEC is also the leading cause of travellers’ diarrhoea, affecting more than 35 million travellers every year.
About ETVAX®
To date, no vaccine against ETEC exists and ETVAX® is the only ETEC vaccine candidate in late-stage development. The strong immunogenicity and safety data, as well as the promising field efficacy data, clearly distinguish ETVAX® as the lead vaccine candidate against ETEC. Successful development of this vaccine will address a huge unmet medical need for children in LMICs as well as for travellers.
