RARE - Boris Javelle

​Boris is an established senior leader within the pharmaceutical industry having worked at a variety of companies such as Intermune, Tesaro, Blueprint Medicines and more recently Nektar Therapeutics. He has been involved in a number of consulting projects with start-up biotechs looking to make that leap into Europe and has recently announced an exciting new venture ICE Biopharma that we talk about later in the episode.

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Key takeaways

Boris started his journey 20 years ago as a Financial Controller in Baxter International who were at that time establishing their European HQ in Switzerland. From that experience, Boris realized what he wanted from his career, building on his foundations he wanted to work in an entrepreneurial style and work with a purpose.

That is how his biotech journey started when in 2010 he joined Intermune as VP Finance and Business Operations. Over time he grew additional responsibility such as IT, HR, Legal, Quality, Manufacturing as well as commercial responsibility by managing distributor markets for Ex-EU markets.

From this wealth of experience, Boris had the opportunity to take on the role of Head of Europe at Nektar Therapeutics in 2021. It was quite an expansion of role for a person with a financial background to become the Head of Region for a West Coast biotech.

Boris then goes on to talk about new venture – ICE Biopharma. He talks about the market reality, where we are seeing fewer biotechs making the move to Europe by themselves by either not launching their innovative drug or having to select a partner. What they also realized was that failing to launch, delaying the launch or choosing the wrong partner is actually eroding the enterprise value of the biotechs and denies patients access to innovative drugs in Europe. They came to the conclusion that they have to bring a new commercial partner of choice for Europe.

The second part was really a people project. Launching and founding a new company is really an exciting project but you have to trust the people you are launching with. Boris talks about how he is thrilled and lucky to be launching the project with two senior leaders, Sebastian Stachowiak and Francis Marsland, who have 20+ years of experience launching innovative drugs in Europe.

When Boris got together with the two other founders, he talks about how it was clear to them what their purpose was and why they have decided to embark on this journey. The “Why” is because all three have family members affected by disease and they felt that everyone deserves access to innovation. Everyone being the patients themselves and the care givers, nurses and KOLs. By having this mission and delivering this mission they can help biotechs globally in fulfilling their purpose towards the patients. They believe in this and this is at the centre of all that they do at ICE Biopharma - bringing innovation to patients in need and those around them.

I would like to take the opportunity to wish Boris Javelle, Sebastian Stachowiak and Francis Marsland the best of luck for ICE Biopharma and look forward to seeing the impact it has across Europe.

For more information on ICE Biopharma, please visit their website at https://icebiopharma.com/

A specific thank you to Boris for taking the time to feature on RARE.

For any questions or if you are interested in featuring on a future episode, please feel free to reach me at l.hulley@sciproglobal.com