Name: Ulrike Grimm
Role: Head of Project Management
Ulrike joined Opterion Health’s management team as Head of Project Management in June 2020. She has held several leadership positions in big pharma companies, gaining extensive project management experience.
Opterion Health, a Swiss-based life sciences company, is currently looking for a bilingual (English/German) Executive Assistant to be the supportive force that empowers our leadership team. The ideal person for the job will be a proactive problem solver with excellent communication skills and a meticulous attention to detail. She/he will have experience working in an office environment, performing administrative duties and providing support to the executive team. The position (60% – 80%) is based in
At Opterion Health, we aim to improve the quality of life for patients, their caregivers and loved ones as well as attempt to increase the survival rates of people who suffer from chronic kidney disease. Quality is important to us and everyone at Opterion Health is committed to maintain a culture of quality and mitigate risk through appropriate systems and processes. Learn more about Opterion Health and the novel solution for peritoneal dialysis (PD) we
Opterion Health held its first Annual General Meeting at its new headquarters at The 5th Floor, in Muttenz, Baselland. The hybrid meeting was well attended by our shareholders – in person or online. All agenda items were unanimously approved by all votes represented. David Ebsworth, Chairman, thanked the two exiting Members of the Board of Directors (BoD), Guido Grentzmann and Andreas Schmidt, for their substantial and valuable contribution over the past years. On behalf of the
Name: Guido Grentzmann
Role: Founder / CSO
Guido Grentzmann founded Opterion in 2012 with the aim to develop a new solution for peritoneal dialysis that will reduce side effects. More than 25 years ago and after he spent some time in academic research in bacterial and viral translational regulation, Guido went into pharmaceutical R&D, working on therapeutical targets, biomarkers and signal pathways in different therapeutic areas, in different roles.
Name: Amelie Tsoutsoulopoulos
Role: Scientific Associate
Amelie Tsoutsoulopoulos, Scientific Associate, is Opterion Health’s employee number one and joined the company in August 2020. She is from Germany and holds a master’s degree in biochemistry and a Ph.D. in pharmacology and toxicology. Amelie is passionate about her projects and highly motivated because she knows that Opterion Health’s product will one day help dialysis patients and their families live a better life.
Yesterday, the new Opterion Health AG office in Muttenz, Baselland, was officially inaugurated and the entire team was overwhelmed to welcome so many guests, and celebrate together with our partner HEMEX and The 5th Floor. Ricardo Cordero, Vice Chairman, and David Ebsworth, Chairman of Opterion, welcomed the guests; Englund, Björn, Opterion’s CEO shared insights into the PeritonealDialysis market and company’s vision. Dr. Susanne H. Hoischen, Nephrologist and Founder & Managing Partner of Sanecum Group, highlighted
Muttenz, Switzerland, 16 September 2021 – Opterion Health AG, a nephrology company focused on innovation in Peritoneal Dialysis (PD), today announced a significant strengthening of its management team, including the appointments of Daniel Lustenberger as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Peter Reinemer as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Mylène Fleurant has been appointed Head of Quality and Ulrike Grimm Head of Project Management. Andreas Schmidt, whom Daniel Lustenberger succeeds as CFO, will continue to support Opterion Health as a partner.
15 July 2021 – It’s been about 100 days since Englund, Björn joined Opterion Health AG as CEO. With his broad background in the dialysis business, how has he experienced his start with Opterion? “The last 100 days have been awesome! Our drive for innovation at Opterion and the novel solution for peritoneal dialysis (PD) we are developing will be a real game changer in dialysis and, more importantly, will improve patients’ quality of life once
3 June 2021 – Hello The 5th Floor – hello Muttenz, Baselland! Opterion Health AG has just moved into its new offices and is excited to become part of the innovative life sciences ecosystem around Basel. The new offices, next to the recently launched inQbator – a startup accelerator created through a partnership between BLKB, HEMEX and Launchpad – and other innovative companies are inspiring and will help us advance our goal to bring innovation
25 March 2021 – Opterion Health AG, a preclinical Swiss life science company, developing the first novel solution for peritoneal dialysis (PD) in the last two decades, today announced the appointment of Björn Englund as CEO. He will take over this role in April 2021, succeeding Guido Grentzmann, the founder and CSO of Opterion, who will focus his activities on the scientific development of the company and the preparation of the start of Phase I.
9 March 2021 – Guido Grentzmann, CEO and CSO of Opterion Health AG, shared insights on our new osmotic driver for Peritoneal Dialysis (PD) at the recent virtual ISPD (International Society for Peritoneal Dialysis)-EuroPD Joint Conference: Common PD fluids use glucose as osmotic driver (ODR) at concentrations between 1% and 5%. The high glucose concentration of conventional PD fluids leads to high initial osmotic pressure. The back-diffusion of glucose, from the dialysate into the patient’s bloodstream, presents a
17 February 2021 – Our portfolio company Opterion Health AG seeks to enhance the quality of life for patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and their loved ones, and to increase survival rates of ESRD patients. They launched their new website at the beginning of the year and have very exciting plans for 2021! Chronic kidney disease is the progressive loss of kidney function. When it reaches an advanced state, end-stage renal disease (ESRD) appears. During
17 February 2021 – Thank you HEMEX for this contribution, excellent support and trust in our novel Peritoneal Dialysis (PD) solution! Our goal is to bring innovation to dialysis care and promote home dialysis to improve the quality of life for patients as well as their families. Preclinical activities and preparations for phase I are in full swing.
12 February 2021 – Amelie Tsoutsoulopoulos and Guido Grentzmann from Opterion Health AG are participating at the virtual ISPD (International Society for Peritoneal Dialysis) – EuroPD Joint Conference. Meet the Opterion team at the oral presentation ‘Osmotically active composition for peritoneal Dialysis’, taking place Monday, 1st March 2021, from 18:15 – 19:45 (CET) / 17:15 – 18:45 (UTC) / 12:15 – 13:45 (ET) in the ‘Free Communications – Basic Science’ session.
6 February 2021 – “About 40% of dialysis incidence is due to diabetes. Further, in times of a pandemic, as we are currently experiencing, an increasing number of patients are reluctant to visit a clinic or a hospital,” says Guido Grentzmann, the founder and CEO/CSO of Opterion Health AG. “Therefore, a physiological glucose or glucose-free peritoneal dialysis (PD) solution, which Opterion has in pre-clinical development, is a much-needed innovation, not only for diabetic dialysis patients, but
26 January 2021 – The entire Opterion Health AG team is excited to move to ‹The 5th Floor› in Muttenz, Basel-Landschaft, and benefit from the innovative life sciences ecosystem around Basel. A big thank you to the ‹Basel Area Business & Innovation› team for their excellent support.
22 January 2021 – Opterion is moving from the canton of Obwalden to Muttenz in the canton of Basel-Landschaft in order to benefit from the local life sciences ecosystem. Following a significantly oversubscribed bridge financing round, Opterion was able to raise a total of 8.4 million euros for its innovative peritoneal dialysis solution. Opterion Health AG has announced its intention to vacate its current headquarters in Sarnen in the canton of Obwalden and move to
19 January 2021 – Opterion Health AG, a preclinical Swiss life science company, developing the first novel solution for peritoneal dialysis (PD) in the last two decades, today announced the successful agreement of a EUR 8.4m Bridge Financing Round. This amount was exclusively raised from a limited number of professional private and institutional investors based in Switzerland and Germany. The proceeds from this financing round will be used to complete preclinical activities and prepare for entry into Phase I.
Opterion Health engaged Ulrike Grimm in June 2020 to establish project excellence for its development program.
Ulrike started her career as a sales representative for Sanol Pharma and joined Merck KGaA in 1997, where she held roles of increasing responsibility starting as team leader for R&D projects and continuing as product leader for Merck’s second commercial oncology drug.
From 2007 to 2010 she was the Vice President of Project and Portfolio Management at Fresenius Biotech. Ulrike joined Vifor Pharma in 2010 and served as the Vice President for Project and Alliance Management as well as Clinical Operations during the next eight years. In 2019 Ulrike started her own consulting company Pro2S AG.
Peter Reinemer, PhD, joined Opterion Health as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in July 2021 and has 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. He started his career at Bayer Pharma, where he worked for over 10 years in discovery research in Germany and Japan.
Peter subsequently served as Chief Scientific Officer, Head of Business Development, Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President, Corporate Development, of Proteros, a discovery services company based in Munich and Boston. He co-founded IMD Natural Solutions, developer of the all-natural preservative agent Nagardo®, which was acquired by Lanxess AG in 2017. Peter has an M.Sc. in chemistry from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, a PhD from the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry/TU Munich, and an MBA.
Mylène Fleurant joined Opterion Health in July 2021 as Head of Quality having spent more than 20 years in leading quality (QA) functions in the life sciences industry. She worked for 10 years as Region Head Quality Europe at Novartis and implemented global quality systems at Merck Serono. Prior to founding her own consulting company in 2019, Mylène was Global Head of QA at Novimmune and VP Quality Affairs at Alvotech.
Mylène is a chemical engineer and holds a master’s degree from the University of Sherbrooke, Canada, as well as a degree in Quality Assurance Management from L’Ecole de Technologie Supérieure (ETS) at the University of Quebec.
Daniel Lustenberger is an experienced international finance, accounting and management consulting professional and joined Opterion Health in September 2021 as Chief Financial Officer (CFO). He is a Swiss Certified Public Accountant, holds an Executive MBA from IMD in Lausanne and has 20 years of life sciences and technology experience.
Daniel supports several start-ups and growth companies, particularly in the life sciences and high tech sectors, as a part-time CFO, business advisor and board member.
Prior to Opterion, he held senior finance positions with Vifor Pharma, Gategroup and DKSH. In his early career, he spent several years with PwC, providing advisory services in M&A, IPOs, process and system improvements, corporate governance and risk management.
The Board of Directors of Opterion Health AG has appointed Björn Englund as CEO of the Company as of April 2021. Björn started his professional career in 1991 as a sales representative at the Gambro Distributor in Saudi Arabia, gradually took over further responsibilities, and in 1996 he became a Managing Director of Gambro Healthcare Sweden AB. He left Gambro in 2006 and moved to Euromedic where he was Vice President of the Dialysis division until 2011. For the next six years he was the President and CEO of DaVita EMEA, and in 2017 was promoted to COO of DaVita International. He left DaVita in 2018 and has since been an Industrial Advisor for EQT, Stockholm.
Andreas Schmid has more than 25 years of experience in Finance in the Life Sciences. He worked as a Pharma Analyst at Merrill Lynch and also has experience in fund raising as well as business development.
During the span of his career Andreas was one of the highest-ranked dialysis and generic pharma analysts, with special expertise in European and CEE/emerging markets. His coverage universe included companies such as Fresenius/FMC (Germany), Gambro (Sweden), Stada (Germany) and Aspen (South Africa). Furthermore, he played a major part in the IPOs of Zentiva (Czech Republic) and Hikma (Jordan). Andreas has also been active as a speaker at various industry conferences, for example in New York, Frankfurt, but also in Warsaw and other Eastern European countries.
In addition, Andreas works as finance lecturer at the Hochschule Pforzheim and is a board member of the German shareholder association SdK.
