Jeroen Pouwels

Jeroen joined the Health Team at Spinverse in September 2022 as a Senior Project Manager. He obtained a M.Sc. in Molecular Life Sciences and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, as well as an Adjunct Professorship in Biochemistry at the University of Turku, Finland.

Jeroen has more than 20 years of R&D experience, mainly in oncology. He has led teams involved in multidisciplinary projects focusing on cancer therapeutics, immune-oncology and the development of predictive models for cancer research. He has also been involved in setting up a Phase Ib clinical trial for breast cancer and in preparing the spin-out of a diagnostic company. He has closely collaborated with numerous international and national pharma companies, clinicians, patient organizations and academic researchers. He has written and published >30 scientific papers in high-impact journals. Over the years, he built a network of over 100 key opinion leaders across different stakeholder groups and more than 10 countries. 

Jeroen has obtained more than 8 M€ in funding from a variety of funding sources, for example Horizon 2020, the US Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Programme, Business Finland, the Academy of Finland, and the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation. He also set up and managed Cancer IO, a large Business Finland funded research consortium focusing on immune-oncology. Cancer IO has a value of 10 M€ and includes 12 big pharma, 9 small and mid-sized biotech, 5 hospitals, 3 patient organizations and 2 universities. In addition, Jeroen was exploitation manager in RESCUER, a large (6 M€, 18 partners) H2020-funded international consortium focusing on personalized breast cancer treatment. 

In his spare time, Jeroen likes to travel, read and spend time with his two children. In addition, Jeroen is an avid stock market investor.