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Improving Quality of Life of
Peritoneal Dialysis Patients

News & Press Releases

Opterion Health strengthens its Management Team

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.

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Björn Englund’s first 100 days as Opterion Health CEO

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

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Opterion Health moved to Muttenz

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

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Opterion Health AG appoints Björn Englund as CEO

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.

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Opterion Health presented at ISPD Conference

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

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HEMEX Article: Bringing Innovation to Dialysis Care and foster Home Dialysis

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

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Opterion at the virtual ISPD conference

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.

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Improving Quality of Life of Dialysis patients

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

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Moving to the Basel area

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.  

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Opterion Health AG moving to Muttenz

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

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Opterion successfully secures EUR 8.4m Bridge Financing Round

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.

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Ulrike Grimm

Head of Project Management

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

Chief Technology Officer

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

Head of Quality

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

Chief Financial Officer

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.

Herr Gelb

CEO

Die Körperfarbe Gelb wird wahrgenommen, wenn der lang- und mittelwellige Anteil des einfallenden weißen Lichtes von einer Oberfläche fast vollständig, der kurzwellige dagegen nicht oder nur sehr wenig zurückgeworfen (remittiert) wird. Diese Mischung von rotem und grünem Licht wird gelb gesehen, aber auch monochromatisches Licht mit Wellenlängen zwischen 565 und 575 nm.

Björn Englund

CEO
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.

Stefan Wohlfeil

Board Member
Stefan Wohlfeil, MD, has over 35 years of experience in the Pharma and Biotech industry. Most recently he was Chief Medical Officer and Head of R&D at Vifor Pharma with responsibility for preclinical and clinical R&D, regulatory and medical affairs as well as drug safety. Prior to that he was Global Head Clinical Research & Pharmacology at Novartis and Bayer. He also has experience as founder and CEO of two start-up companies in the oncology area, one of which was based in Japan. Stefan started his career at Bayer Pharma, where he worked for over 20 years in discovery research and preclinical and clinical development in Germany, USA and Japan. Stefan holds a Medical Doctor’s degree from the University of Düsseldorf, Germany.

Andreas Schmidt

Board Member

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.

Ricardo Cordero

Vice Chairman
Dr Ricardo Cordero, PhD, serves as Vice Chairman of Opterion Health since 2016. Ricardo has over 30 years of experience in the Financial Services Industry where he held various senior positions, for example as CEO of BZ Bank, Managing Partner at Reichmuth & Co Investmentfonds AG, Co-founder and Co-CEO at BWO Bank, etc. Further, he is a passionate and experienced private Swiss investor and holds various investments in the Life Science, Technology and high-end Consumer Goods industry.

David Ebsworth

Chairman
Dr David Ebsworth, PhD, has been Chairman of Opterion Health since December 2016. David has over 40 years of experience in the Pharma, Healthcare and Biotech industry. David is a past CEO of Galenica, Vifor Pharma as well as Oxford GlycoSciences and past global head of the Pharmaceutical Division of Bayer. He has chaired several private and public companies and has served on numerous boards as either chairman of the audit, remuneration or nominations and governance committees. David is currently Chairman of Verona Pharma and Actimed Therapeutics.

Guido Grentzmann

Founder / CSO / Board
Dr Guido Grenzmann, PhD, is the founder of Opterion Health and has more than 25 years of experience in Pharma R&D and Project Management. After academic work on bacterial and viral mechanisms of translational regulation, he became Group Leader Molecular Biology/Genomics at Pfizer and Director Biochemistry/GeneProfiling at Altana Pharma where he worked in Discovery of inflammation in respiratory diseases. In 2007 he founded PBS PharmaBioServices providing contract research and consulting mainly in inflammatory diseases, in multiple therapeutic domains. 2012, Guido founded Opterion, with the aim to develop a new PD solution, to decrease side-effects of this promising therapy.