INVITED SPEAKER

Professor Per Fisher

Dr. Per Fischer holds a D.Phil. from University of Oxford in Glycobiology & Infectious Diseases and has 6 years of laboratory experience within immunology and infectious diseases prior to starting his career in industry. He has 28 years experience in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry within product and business development. He has founded and run several biotech companies, worked as a biotech consultant and as entrepreneur in residence with Novo Holdings. His primary therapeutic areas of interest have been innate immunology, vaccines and haemostasis. He has for the last 14 years been the CEO of MinervaX, developing a prophylactic vaccine against Group B Streptococcus. 

The company has faced many challenges along the way related to skepticism about the business case for a maternal vaccine in relation of vaccine hesitancy pre-COVID, developing a protein-based vaccine against an encapsulated Gram-positive bacterium, competition from more traditional CPS-conjugate vaccine approached and development of a surrogate efficacy marker to be used for regulatory approval of the vaccine pitched against the threat of running a very large Phase 3 efficacy study. Yet, the company has raised close to 200 mEUR for the program to date and grown to +60 employees. The vaccine has completed Phase 2 development in the maternal indication and Phase 1 development in the older adult indication. A final confirmatory Phase 3 trial is currently being planned in the maternal indication.