Vésale Bioscience has hired Guillaume de Viron, Partner at beLean.net, as Chief Financial Officer in order to accelerate its IPO.
“The Research and Development (R&D) subsidiary of Vésale Pharma has just recruited a high-quality CFO, with unparalleled experience. This is Guillaume de Viron.” headlines L-Post, the new pure player media in French-speaking Belgium.
As CFO, Guillaume de Viron will contribute to Vésale Bioscience, which is currently preparing its fundraising (10+ million €) with the aim of accelerating the production and marketing of phages.
Phage therapy is the use of phages, which are natural predators of bacteria, to fight infections that are multidrug resistant to antibiotics. These are the leading cause of death in the world. According to the WHO, they are the cause of more than 700,000 deaths today, a figure which is expected to reach more than 10 million deaths in 2050 if nothing is done.
The phages could effectively replace antibiotics in the long term and make it possible to fight against pathologies such as urinary tract infections, staphylococci aureus, respiratory infections, nosocomial diseases, etc. In short, all these bacterial diseases which are today treated with antibiotics with relative effectiveness. According to its leaders, Vésale Bioscience is at the forefront of phage research. In March 2020, the company signed a partnership contract with the Belgian army for their development, a first of its kind between the army and a private company (Triple Helix agreement). This is a collaboration with the Royal Military Hospital.
Guillaume de Viron will also join the executive committee of Vésale Bioscience. His experience will be an advantage for the company, which is also preparing its IPO to be completed by the end of 2022. Indeed, he is the former founder and administrator of the start-up Univercells, based in Gosselies. Univercells develops and produces vaccines at low cost. It has received millions of aid, notably from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (founder of Microsoft) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) for the production of various vaccines (polio, measles, rubella, etc.). He also worked as CFO for MaSTherCell, another start-up in the Pharma sector for which he prepared the quotation on the OTC and Nasdaq, before its acquisition for 285 million € by the American group Catalent Pharma in 2020. He has also performed the same function in other biotech and medtech companies (OncoDNA, Imcyse, Kitozyme, etc.).
Sources:
- L’Echo (2021), Vésale Bioscience ouvre son capital et vise la bourse
- L-Post (2021), Renfort de poids pour Vésale Bioscience
- La Gazette du LABORATOIRE (2021), Vésale Bioscience renforce son équipe et s’adjoint les services de Guillaume de Viron, CFO
- Le Soir (2021), Vésale Bioscience et la Défense s’attaquent aux bactéries multi-résistances
Vésale Bioscience has retained our CFO-as-a-Service to support the financing of their growing activities and research. Since one year, we have provided them our expertise and advised them on their funding process and search for investors concerning shares on the secondary market:
- Define a company value based on bottom-up and top-down approach
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- One-pager to explain the project to potential investors
- Propose a list of potential investors for approbation by the shareholder
- Negotiate terms for the acquisition
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