With new CEO ENPICOM enters its next phase

Today, the Dutch bioinformatics software development company ENPICOM announced that they expanded the team with the experienced Life Sciences industry executive and health-tech entrepreneur Jos Lunenberg. This expansion marks a new strategic direction for the company. After successfully serving customers with tailored bioinformatics data analysis and visualization solutions in the first two years of its existence, ENPICOM will now also bring to market an innovative software platform to support the development, patient stratification and treatment monitoring of immunotherapies.

Jos Lunenberg has over 25 years of experience and proven success in the Life Sciences industry, excelling in entrepreneurship, marketing strategy, fundraising and business management. He was a founder of health-tech companies like VitaMagna, and co-owner and Chief Business Officer at GENALICE BV, where he led the commercial team for five years, raised capital in seed and consecutive investment rounds and established scientific and strategic partnerships.

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Jos was a member of the executive management teams at CERUS Europe BV (NASDAQ: CERS) and Cryo-Save NV (Euronext: CRYO) and Global Marketing Director at Organon NV. He successfully commercialized new pharmaceutical, diagnostic and other Life Sciences products. Jos obtained an MBA at the New York Institute of Technology and a Master’s in Medical Biology at the University of Groningen.

Ready for the next phase
“We are extremely pleased to add Jos to our team as a business partner and Chief Executive Officer. He has a great international track record in the Life Sciences industry, and brings very relevant market and entrepreneurial experience to our company”

commented Alvise Trevisan and Nicola Bonzanni, respectively the Chief Technology and Scientific Officers in the new organization.

“Our backgrounds, experiences and networks are very different but truly complementary, and with him on board we have the management team to lead the company to success in this new phase”.

ENPICOM was originally setup as a general partnership between Nicola Bonzanni and Alvise Trevisan. Last Friday, on September 1st, the new management team jointly founded ENPICOM BV, in support of the new product development ambition of the company. A few days before, ENPICOM’s application for an early phase loan (Vroegefasefinanciering, or VFF), was granted by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. This enables the company to kick-start the development phase of the new product and expand the team. The new CEO explains the future direction of the company:

“From the first day we met, we felt we can do this together. Since that day, we have moved at high pace realizing our dream to truly contribute with technology to the well-being of patients with complex diseases, like cancer. In parallel to our VFF application, we have proactively started the hiring process for the first two positions. On top of this, we have built a EUROSTARS grant consortium to also lock-in the external clinical validations immediately succeeding this early phase. We will collaborate with different SME’s developing immunotherapies and one of the best Universities in the field of immunosequencing. As soon as we have received the outcome of this grant application we can disclose the names of these organizations”.

Technology drives targeted drug treatment
Immunotherapy is a game-changing therapy in which a patient’s own immune system is stimulated to fight complex diseases like cancer. It has been on the covers of all the top ranked medical journals and famous magazines, like Nature, Science and Time. Immunotherapy is a true revolution and a rapidly expanding market, but there is a problem: most immunotherapies are extremely expensive and one size does not fit all. There are many types of immunotherapy and to save lives it is crucial to bring it to the right patients and detect whether the treatment is effective or not as early as possible. To enable this targeted drug treatment; technology is needed!

The technology under development by ENPICOM has the power to detect the changes in a tumor at a much earlier stage, allowing doctors to intervene and make better informed treatment choices. It will save many lives of patients and significant amounts of money for society.

Jos Lunenberg added:

”This is one of the key applications of what we want to bring to market. A data analysis software solution, able to closely monitor the effect of immunotherapies. Starting from a non-invasive (for example blood) sample, using sequencing technology, we can extract a reliable snapshot of the immune system, and with our software understand what is going on at that very moment. The amount of data to analyze is staggering and standard tools for genomic data analysis are not fit for this specific job. Our software will be able to support multiple sample preparation and sequencing protocols. Even more importantly, it will be able to reliably monitor the immune-system over-time or compare samples from different patients. Two unique elements, not covered by any other product in the market yet”.

About ENPICOM

ENPICOM is a spin-off of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and a young, dynamic and rapidly expanding bioinformatics software development company. Originally setup in 2015 as a service organization, building tailored solutions in the broad field of bioinformatics, and since this year also on a mission to bring to the market innovative products in the field of immunogenomics. The first product in the pipeline is an innovative T-cell receptor and B-cell receptor repertoire analysis platform, to support development, guidance and monitoring of immunotherapies.