Who We Are
Austrianni GmbH is a pharmaceutical company with the mission to develop therapeutics for the prevention and treatment of tuberculosis.
The Health
Problem We Will
Help to Solve
Imagine that you take a ride in a bus in London or Vienna. Across from you sits a man who obviously is not well. He coughs a lot. Perhaps he has tuberculosis, and if so, he may infect you with his coughs, spits and sneezes. He does so by belching at you myriads of tiny airborne droplets, not much bigger in size than the bacteria they carry. When you inhale the droplets, a single bacterium, called Mycobacterium tuberculo-sis, can infect you. Your innate immune system may protect you from the bacterium, and we do not know how often it does. But if the bacterium takes hold and establishes a productive infection, you are part of the one quarter of the world’s population that is infected with tuberculosis.
You may go through your life without ever knowing that you are infected, and nine out of ten people do not come down with the disease. In this latent stage, the bacterium takes up residence in so-called granulomas—clusters of immune cells that contain bacterial spreading. These granulomas often show up incidentally on an X-ray or other imaging test done for reason different from testing for tubercu-losis. However, the chance is one in ten that the granulomas break up, and then the latent tuberculosis converts into open tuberculosis. This may occur, if your immune system is weakened, either by infection with another microbe, or by medication. But in most cases, the reasons are not known.
Open tuberculosis is treated by medication, but the treatment is not pleasant. You have to take antibiotics for six to nine months, and the side effects may induce you to not complete the treatment. That, of course, endangers the people around you as well. Even if you are a compliant patient, you may be unlucky, and you do not respond to the commonly used antibiotic treatment—that is, you have multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. That places you among the five percent of patients with a similar condition, with 480,000 cases and 190,000 deaths each year. Now your treat-ment may take eighteen to twenty four months to complete, and the average cure rate is 50 percent. (A new treatment schedule may be completed in nine to twelve months, and will cost less, “only” $1,000).
If you are really unlucky, the bacteria that infected you do not respond to the core antituberculosis drugs, that is, you have extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis. You may have become infected from a patient who is already ill with the condition. But the disease also may have developed because of inadequate clinical or drug management. Now you have to be quarantined, the chance to be cured drops even more, and the costs may reach $500,000 a year. So you will be happy to learn that in an all-out effort, the Austrianni team attacks the problem in three different ways, with new antibiotics to bacteria, and with antibodies to either the patient or the bacteria.
Imagine that you take a ride in a bus in London or Vienna. Across from you sits a man who obviously is not well. He coughs a lot. Perhaps he has tuberculosis, and if so, he may infect you with his coughs, spits and sneezes. He does so by belching at you myriads of tiny airborne droplets, not much bigger in size than the bacteria they carry. When you inhale the droplets, a single bacterium, called Mycobacterium tuberculosis, can infect you. Your innate immune system may protect you from the bacterium, and we do not know how often it does. But if the bacterium takes hold and establishes a productive infection, you are part of the one quarter of the world’s population that is infected with tuberculosis.
You may go through your life without ever knowing that you are infected, and nine out of ten people do not come down with the disease. In this latent stage, the bacterium takes up residence in so-called granulomas—clusters of immune cells that contain bacterial spreading. These granulomas often show up incidentally on an X-ray or other imaging test done for reason different from testing for tuberculosis. However, the chance is one in ten that the granulomas break up, and then the latent tuberculo-sis converts into open tuberculosis. This may occur, if your immune system is weakened, either by infection with another microbe, or by medication. But in most cases, the reasons are not known.
Open tuberculosis is treated by medication, but the treatment is not pleasant. You have to take antibiotics for six to nine months, and the side effects may induce you to not complete the treatment. That, of course, endangers the people around you as well. Even if you are a compliant patient, you may be unlucky, and you do not respond to the commonly used antibiotic treatment—that is, you have multidrug resistant tuberculosis. That places you among the five percent of patients with a similar condition, with 480,000 cases and 190,000 deaths each year. Now your treatment may take eighteen to twenty four months to complete, and the average cure rate is 50 percent. (A new treatment schedule may be completed in nine to twelve months, and will cost less, “only” $1,000).
If you are really unlucky, the bacteria that infected you do not respond to the core antituberculosis drugs, that is, you have extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis. You may have become infected from a patient who is already ill with the condition. But the disease also may have developed because of inadequate clinical or drug management. Now you have to be quarantined, the chance to be cured drops even more, and the costs may reach $500,000 a year. So you will be happy to learn that in an all-out effort, the Austrianni team attacks the problem in three different ways, with new antibiotics to bacteria, and with antibodies to either the patient or the bacteria.
Management
Gloria Esposito, Ph.D.
Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Esposito obtained her Ph.D. in Genetics and Molecular Biology at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. During this period she worked extensively in antibody engineering and on the development of therapeutic antibodies against viral infections.
Matthias Wabl, Ph.D.
Chief Scientific Officer and Acting Chairman
Dr. Wabl was a co-founder of Sagres Discovery, Inc. (now Novartis), where he served as President and as Chair, Scientific Advisory Board, and most recently he has been the Chief Executive Officer and Board Chairman of Trianni Inc. (trianni.com; now an AbCellera Company), which he founded.
Science Advisors
Werner Müller, Ph.D.
Dr. Müller received his Ph.D. from the University of Cologne, where he was a pioneer in generating countless transgenic mice now used all over the World. He was one of the founding members of the IMGT database, which
Michel Streuli, Ph.D.
Dr. Michel Streuli is Chief Executive Officer of Foundery Innovations, an immunotherapy venture studio. Prior to Foundery, he was Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of Pionyr Immunotherapeutics, Inc.
Prof. Sir Stewart Thomas Cole KCMG FRS
Professor Stewart Cole is an internationally renowned microbiologist working in global health. He has made outstanding contributions to HIV and HPV genomics, antimicrobial resistance research
Gloria Esposito, Ph.D.
Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Esposito obtained her Ph.D. in Genetics and Molecular Biology at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. During this period she worked extensively in antibody engineering and on the development of therapeutic antibodies against viral infections. She completed her postdoctoral training in the Laboratory of Klaus Rajewsky in Cologne (Germany), where she subsequently held a position as Investigator. The major focus of her research was on lymphocyte development and antibody maturation. She moved from academia to the Dutch pharmaceutical company Organon, where she led an in vivo drug target validation group, and then to Taconic, where she established, and for many years led, the Scientific Project Management and Sales Team with global responsibility for the Custom Model Generation portfolio.
Matthias Wabl, Ph.D.
Chief Scientific Officer and Acting Chairman
Dr. Wabl was a co-founder of Sagres Discovery, Inc. (now Novartis), where he served as President and as Chair, Scientific Advisory Board. Most recently, he has been the Chief Executive Officer and Board Chairman of Trianni Inc. (trianni.com; now an AbCellera Company), which he founded. He was a member of the NIH, Small Business Innovative Research Study Section, and an advisor to numerous biotechnology companies and to the FDA. He is also a Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) where he has been engaged in research on the generation of antibody diversity and the basis of autoimmunity for over 30 years. He received his engineering degree in chemistry from the Technical University in Graz and his Ph.D. in biology from the Max-Planck Institute in Berlin. He was a Member of the Basel Institute for Immunology and a Principal Investigator at the Max-Planck Institute in Tübingen, Germany.
Werner Müller, Ph.D.
Dr. Müller received his Ph.D. from the University of Cologne, where he was a pioneer in generating countless transgenic mice now used all over the World. He was one of the founding members of the IMGT database, which contains sequences encoding antibody, T-cell receptor and histocompatibility genes. Using advanced mutant mice, he showed that Interleukin-4 is critical for an effective antibody response against parasite infections. At the Helmholtz Centre of Infection Research in Braunschweig, he established the first European “mouse infection challenge platform” as part of the European Mouse Disease Clinic. This platform facilitates the study of gene functions in bacterial and parasite infections. Currently, Dr. Müller holds the Bill Ford Chair of Cellular Immunology at the University of Manchester, UK, where he continues to study the role of cytokines on inflammation and host defense in parasite infection.
Michel Streuli, Ph.D.
Michel Streuli is Chief Executive Officer of Foundery Innovations, an immunotherapy venture studio. Prior to Foundery, he was Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of Pionyr Immunotherapeutics, Inc. Michel held senior research positions at Gilead, Merck, Schering-Plough, and Organon, following a decade on the faculties of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School.
During his 20+ years in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, he has led numerous drug development programs from discovery through the early clinical stage, with a focus on therapies for cancer, chronic viral, autoimmune, and inflammatory diseases, including overseeing the development of the immunomodulatory anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody Keytruda, and chairing the Keytruda early development team that brought Keytruda to the clinic.
Michel holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Zurich, where he was involved in the cloning and characterization of interferon-alpha-2, which led to the development of INTRON A and PEG-INTRON.
Dr. Alfred Gusenbauer
Director
Dr. Alfred Gusenbauer served as Federal Chancellor of Austria and is a member of the Club de Madrid, an independent organization of more than 80 former presidents and prime ministers. He remains advisor to many heads of state. Mr. Gusenbauer is the first Leitner Global Fellow at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs in New York. He is also Head of the Supervisory Board of Strabag, Austria’s leading construction company, and he serves on the board of several other companies.
Andreas Wabl
Trustee
Andreas Wabl was a Co-Founder of the Austrian Green Party, the Chairman of the Austrian Government Accountability Office, and a Member of the Austrian Parliament for 13 years. He also served as the Climate Commissioner of the Federal Chancellor of Austria. Mr. Wabl studied at the University College of Teacher Education Carinthia and is a licensed mediator.
Prof. Sir Stewart Thomas Cole KCMG FRS
Professor Stewart Cole is an internationally renowned microbiologist working in global health.
He has made outstanding contributions to HIV and HPV genomics, antimicrobial resistance
research and the molecular microbiology of toxigenic clostridia. However, he is most highly
acclaimed for his pioneering work on the pathogenicity, evolution and genomics of the
mycobacteria responsible for tuberculosis (TB) and leprosy. His team harnessed genome-
derived information to accelerate TB drug and vaccine discovery and development, and
candidate drugs that arose from his work are currently in clinical trials. Throughout his career
he has strived to translate findings from his discovery research into interventions that benefit
human health. Professor Cole is a past president of the Institut Pasteur, Paris, and the Global
Health Institute at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.
Dr. Christoph Heusser
Dr. Christoph Heusser was Head of Immunology at Ciba-Geigy and Head of the Transplantation/Immunology Unit at Novartis. During this time, he co-invented the concept of anti-IgE treatment which resulted in the development of Xolair, an antibody drug for the treatment of moderate to severe persistent allergic asthma and Chronic Idiopathic Urticaria. Currently he serves as Principal Research Investigator at the Novartis Research Institutes of Biomedical Research. Dr. Heusser received his Dr. sc. nat. in Biochemistry and Immunology from the ETH Zürich.
Matthias Wabl, Ph.D.
Chief Scientific Officer and Acting Chairman
Dr. Wabl was a co-founder of Sagres Discovery, Inc. (now Novartis), where he served as President and as Chair, Scientific Advisory Board, and most recently he has been the Chief Executive Officer and Board Chairman of Trianni Inc (trianni.com). He has been a member of the NIH, Small Business Innovative Research Study Section and an advisor to numerous biotechnology companies and the FDA. He is also a Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) where he has been engaged in research on the generation of antibody diversity and the basis of autoimmunity for over 20 years. He received his engineering degree in chemistry from the Technical University in Graz and his Ph.D. in biology from the Max-Planck Institute in Berlin. He was a Member of the Basel Institute for Immunology and a Principal Investigator at the Max-Planck Institute in Tübingen, Germany.
Our Team
In our quest to combat tuberculosis, we have assembled an enthusiastic multinational team from Austria, Cameroon, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Serbia, and the United States.
World TB Incidence
Tuberculosis (TB) kills more than a million people each year and incapacitates ten times more. One quarter of the world’s population is infected with TB, and TB is among the top 10 causes of death world-wide. While it is currently most prevalent in low-income countries, cases arise everywhere. Adding to the health crisis, drug-resistant forms of the disease emerge as a major threat especially in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, but they may become even more widespread.
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