As a Chief Commercial Officer, Burkhard Frey oversees all aspects of the company's commercial team, including its strategy development and operations. He is a well-known executive in the Basel region who has held various leading positions in cantonal administration and private sector.
Burkhard Frey obtained a master’s degree in law at the University of Basel and several diplomas in continuing education, including a Master in Business Engineering at the University of St. Gallen. He gained experience in the organizational development of startups during his studies at the University of California (Berkeley, California).
From 2002 until 2010, Burkhard Frey worked at SBB Cargo AG as Head Quality Management and Head Technical Know-how & Safety. In 2010, he became a Director and General Secretary at Personalfonds SBB, a Foundation that supports active and retired employees of SBB in financial need due to health, social and professional events. Until 2022, Burkhard served ten years as General Secretary at the University Hospital Basel, supporting the corporate strategy, arranging collaborations with external parties, and taking all useful measures to manage the hospital business. With such tremendous experience and a broad network of reliable partners, Burkhard Frey brings enormous value to Swiss Rockets to support the company’s commercial development.
About RocketVax AG:
RocketVax has its foundation in the ties between Swiss Rockets AG, a Swiss incubator and accelerator for startups with innovative therapies, and a team of expert scientists from the Universities of Basel and Zurich, the ETH Zurich, the University Hospital Basel, the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Basel, and Gigabases Switzerland AG, a spinoff of ETH Zurich.
RocketVax’s first group of vaccines addresses the SARS-CoV-2 virus and are currently undergoing preclinical testing while preparing for the production of the vaccines for human clinical trials. At RocketVax, proprietary molecular biology technologies are used to develop novel vaccines for infectious diseases like COVID-19, cancer, and auto-immune disorders. Several vaccine candidates in the pipeline are being developed. They include the original live, single-cycle virus vaccine, live-attenuated vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, and a vaccine candidate against cancer.
About Swiss Rockets AG:
Founded in 2018, Swiss Rockets AG is implementing a paradigm shift in healthcare. Patients benefit from new therapies developed with innovative and pioneering methods. The Swiss Rockets AG team combines expertise and experience to create innovative medicines focused on cancer and viral diseases.
The founders of Swiss Rockets AG are Dr. Vladimir Cmiljanovic, Dr. Natasa Cmiljanovic, Manuel Ebner, Dr. Thomas Sander and Dr. Thomas Staehelin. Vladimir Cmiljanovic is the CEO, a medicinal chemist, and entrepreneur with more than 15 years of experience in cancer drug development. He is the founder of the Swiss biotech companies PIQUR AG and TargImmune AG. With his sister Dr. Natasa Cmiljanovic, the Chief Scientific Officer of Swiss Rockets AG, he has developed cancer drugs at the University of Basel. He has also founded and managed several biotech companies. Manuel Ebner is a Managing Director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Switzerland, and a strategic advisor to Swiss Rockets AG. Dr. Thomas Sander, one of the first employees of Actelion's biotech company, is a scientific advisor to Swiss Rockets AG. Dr. Thomas Staehelin, the co-founder of Swiss Rockets AG, is a member of the Executive Board and Chairman of several shareholder companies and foundations.
Members of the Board of Directors of Swiss Rockets AG are Dr. Vladimir Cmiljanovic (Chairman), Prof. Dr. Michael N. Hall, a renowned researcher and professor at the Center for Molecular Biosciences at the University of Basel, Dr. Natasa Cmiljanovic, a medicinal chemist and clinical scientist with experience in the development of cancer drugs, Dr. Thomas Ladner, a business lawyer, founder and co-founder of several successful start-ups and the World.Minds Foundation, and André Debrunner, a financial expert and fund manager at Northern Trust Switzerland AG.