Sarah Meibusch
Partner, One Ventures and Chairperson
At OneVentures, Ms. Meibach is responsible for sourcing life sciences companies and actively shaping their future. She applies her global executional experience and entrepreneurial passion to nurture their success. Her enterprise level leadership experience has been forged over 20 years in a wide spectrum of organisations, including start-up, private companies, ASX and NASDAQ-listed companies, a multi-national pharmaceutical company and university research organisations.
Prior to OneVentures, she was the Asian Business Development lead for Shire Pharmaceuticals (now Takeda), a global specialty pharmaceutical company. Ms. Meibach identified technologies and developed collaborations across Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan including playing a key role in sourcing the $300M Fibrotech deal announced in 2015.
Ms. Meibach has held senior management roles at Progen Pharmaceuticals, The University of Queensland’s QAAFI institute, Beef CRC and Pyxis Genomics. From 2011-2017 she led the development of the new UQ QAAFI research institute from 32 people to 450 people and a financially profitable position within 5 years. This included leading the negotiation of a complex $70+M staff transfer and research agreement for QAAFI between the University of Queensland and the Queensland Government. In 2012, Ms. Meibach spearheaded the IP asset assignment and company wind-up of 20 year $168M Beef Co-operative Research Centre, involving five universities across five state jurisdictions, MLA, CSIRO and Meat and Lamb NZ and pastoral companies. At Progen Pharmaceuticals, Ms. Meibach worked collaboratively with the CEO and CFO over several years to secure a total financing of ~$125M via five capital raisings for oncology drug development, and in 2008 led the $22M acquisition of an oncology drug discovery company.
Ms. Meibach is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD) and currently holds directorships with Kira Biotech, QAAFI Advisory Board and Life Sciences Queensland. She holds Bachelor level science qualifications from the University of Queensland and a Masters from Cornell University and has completed a postgraduate course at Harvard Business School focusing on negotiation and decision making.
Sarkis Mazmanian, PhD
Co-founder and Director
Soux Professor of Microbiology, Heritage Principal Investigator, Caltech
Dr. Mazmanian is the Luis & Nelly Soux Professor of Microbiology in the Division of Biology & Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles, where Dr. Mazmanian also received his PhD training in microbiology and immunology. He was a Helen Hay Whitney Post-doctoral Fellow and subsequently appointed assistant professor at Harvard Medical School in 2006, and later that year moved to Caltech. Dr. Mazmanian has won numerous awards including a Searle Scholar, Young Investigator of the Year at Harvard Medical School, Damon Runyon Innovation Award, was named by Discover Magazine as one of the “Best Brains in Science under 40”, “Life Science Superstar” by Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News, and recently received the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” award.
His laboratory focuses on the study of beneficial bacterial molecules from the human gut microbiome as novel therapies for immunologic and neurologic disorders, with a specific focus on developing probiotic treatments for autism. He is a founder of 2 biotech companies and has or currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of over a dozen companies, academic centers and not-for-profit foundations.
Nora Frey
Venture Partner, Seventure
Ms. Frey is a Venture Partner at Seventure since June 2021, after 2 years consulting for Seventure as Advisor for Food and Nutrition. She is based in Basel, Switzerland and focuses mainly on Nutrition, Foodtech and microbiome-related opportunities.
Ms. Frey brings more than 20 years of professional experience in healthcare research, investment, management, strategy and business development. She co-founded several companies and was a board member and chairman of companies in different fields including biotech, nutraceuticals/food production and finance/investment. She started her career in 1998 as partner at Bellevue Group, Switzerland, as part of the BB Biotech team, one of the largest investors in the public and private biotech sector. Ms. Frey then founded Adamant Biomedical Investments AG, a successful healthcare asset management boutique. As CIO, Nora headed research and portfolio management.
In 2008, Ms. Frey co-founded Cederberg GmbH, a healthcare marketing and distribution business. Nora was also centrally involved in the building of a food and nutraceuticals developer and producer in Africa. Having both Swiss and German citizenships, she holds a PhD in Biochemistry/Immunology and a Masters Degree in Microbiology.
A. Stewart Campbell, PhD
Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Campbell joined Axial Therapeutics in 2017 and was appointed the company’s Chief Executive Officer in February 2021. Dr. Campbell has played a fundamental role in the company’s growth and strategy over the last 46 years. He brings nearly 30 years of experience leading and building teams that have strong track records of discovering and developing novel therapeutics for the patients who need them. Prior to joining Axial, Dr. Campbell held various leadership roles at biopharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing companies, including Corden Pharma, Surface Logix and Insmed Inc. At Corden Pharma, Dr. Campbell served as Head of Product Management and Business Development for Carbohydrates and Lipids and as Head of Operations for Corden Pharma’s Woburn, MA manufacturing site. Prior to Corden Pharma, Dr. Campbell served as Vice President of R&D at Ancora Pharmaceuticals, successfully triaging the company through the acquisition and integration process by Corden Pharma. While at Surface Logix and Insmed, he played an integral role in the discovery and development of five clinical-stage drug candidates, including the Rho kinase inhibitor belumosudil (Rezurock™) and TAK-607 (rIGF-1/BP-3). During his career, Dr. Campbell has been a co-inventor on more than 20 issued patents.
He holds a BS with Honors in Chemistry from St. Francis Xavier University, a PhD in Organic Chemistry from the Queen’s University (Canada) and completed his post-doctoral research at Duke University.
