INTRODUCTION TO BIOBUSINESS

Wednesday, February 9, 09:00 - 11:15

About Eric Claassen | Professor & Entrepreneur

Eric Claassen (1957) is SMBWO board certified Immunologist and family man, 30% academic and 70% sequential entrepreneur. He was also the winner of the Dutch 1 million Euro NGI Valorisation Award for ‘Excellent deal making with Industry”. Eric successfully founded and sold a number of Dutch Biotech firms among which Viroclinics Biosciences BV in 2017. He is Executive Advisor of Raymond James Investment Banking Ltd. He is founder and CEO of ViroNovative BV and an investor in over 15 Dutch Biotech startup’s. He is Chairman of the Probiotic Advisory Board of Pfizer Consumer Health (USA) and Chairman of the SAB of Christian Hansen A/S (Denmark). Eric was also chairman of NATO PG32 (CTS clearance and need to know) on “Handheld detection of Biological Weapons”. In 2001 he was appointed as the first Biopartner professor "Entrepreneurship in the Life Sciences" on behalf of the Ministry of Economic Affairs at the Athena Institute, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. This chair, which he still holds, was transformed in 2005 to “Business management and Entrepreneurship in Health & Life Sciences with a Tenure Full Professorship (0.4 FTE). He teaches Business Management, Entrepreneurship, Clinical Trials and Strategic Financing. In 2020 eight PhD students are working under his direct guidance at the cross roads of Medical/Life Sciences, Valorization, Innovation, Business development and IP management. Eric is senior author on almost 300 peer reviewed papers and patents. (highly quoted; see PubMed under Eric Claassen, H-index of 58 per 2020. https://research.vu.nl/en/persons/hjhm-claassen/publications/ ) He supervised/completed over 30 PhD’s. Recently, Eric published/edited a book on “Microbiota in health and disease: from pregnancy to childhood” (2018) and “Immunological recognition of peptides in Medicine and Biology” at CRC publishers. Eric is happily remarried (Conny Kruijssen), after his wife Dr. Suzan Jeurissen died of breastcancer, and he has 6 children.

In 2019 he published Gezond naar 115 or translated “Healthy towards 115” in Dutch (!) a book for the general public on healthy aging.