Board of Directors
Our Vision is to be the global leaders in delivering medicines that salvage patients suffering from life-threatening inflammation.
Kees Groen
Chief Executive Officer
Kees has been Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Matisse Pharmaceuticals since 2017 and is one of the early investors in the company. In 2023, he took over the role of CEO.
Kees Groen is co-founder and CEO of DGr Pharma and was founder and from 1997 until 2015 General Manager of Kinesis Pharma, a consultancy company in drug development. He was also co-founder and CEO of LAP&P Consultants, a modelling and simulation company and he was a member of the drug development management team at Tibotec (now Janssen), an extremely successful company in the field of HIV. Kees holds a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences.
Kees has extensive experience in pharmaceutical research and development with regulatory authorities (six years with the Dutch Medicines Evaluation Board) and within the industry in Europe, US and Asia. This included the generation and evaluation of in vitro data on absorption, metabolism and excretion, the mathematical modelling of these data and simulation/extrapolation of data from animals to man. As a consultant, he has been involved in the fields of preclinical and clinical development on a management and operational level, regulatory affairs and licensing. He has a broad knowledge in the area of small molecules as well as biotechnological products. Furthermore Kees is chairman of the supervisory board of Micreos B.V. and 28th North Discovery.
In his current role, Kees will focus on product development, regulatory, legal, funding and partnering, besides his general management activities.
Marcel Jacobs
Chief Business Officer
Marcel has joined the management team of Matisse as CBO at the end of 2022 and became board member in 2023.
Marcel holds an MBA in International Management and has been working in business development, marketing, sales & investor relations in the biotech field from 1998 until 2010. He held various director positions in listed biotechnology companies Rhein Biotech, Green Cross Vaccine Corp., Berna Biotech & Crucell in The Netherlands, South Korea and Switzerland. All of these companies were mainly focusing on the prevention of infectious diseases. In different management roles, Marcel also managed M&A activities, licensing deals & product launches. For the past 11 years, Marcel was part of the management board as global commercial director for VDL Bus & Coach as well as director/board member of all of its 13 foreign affiliates thereby managing a total team of more than 300 people. In this period, the company achieved market leadership in providing turn-key projects for zero emission public transportation In Europe.
Marcel will be mainly focusing on business and financial planning, funding and partnering. He is also responsible for communication and investor relations.