Dr. Pombo-Villar is currently the CTO of TargImmune Therapeutics AG in Switzerland. He held the post of CEO position from its seed stage in 2017 until August 2021. Under his leadership, the company developed the innovative targeted immunooncology platform and its lead project into IND-enabling studies, established the operations in Basel, and raised over CHF 47 million. He studied Chemistry at the University of Warwick where he obtained his Ph.D., MSc, and BSc. He completed his post-doctoral studies at the ETH Zürich in prebiotic chemistry and organic chemistry under Prof. A Eschenmoser. He spent 23 years in drug discovery and development at Sandoz and Novartis, as well as held several roles in business development functions, and was head of alliance management at the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research (NIBR), where he focused on creating and managing the company’s collaborative efforts. Prior to joining TargImmune, he was chief operations officer and a Board Member of Oxford BioTherapeutics (OBT) overseeing the UK -based biotech’s newly created development operations in Basel. Dr. Pombo-Villar is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a member of several scientific societies, and has completed executive business studies at IMD (MTE, Lausanne), Harvard Business School (US), and the Tuck School of Business (Dartmouth, US).
