Management Team
Highly experienced pan-European team.
Aki Prihti
Chief Executive Officer, M.Sc. (Econ. and BA)
Aki Prihti
Chief Executive Officer, M.Sc. (Econ. and BA)
Aki joined Aplagon as CEO in February 2015.
He is one of the founders of Inveni Capital, a life science focused venture capital fund, and serves as a board member in Herantis Pharma Oyj and Rokote Laboratories Finland Oy. Aki has been involved in setting up and developing several life science companies. Aki has more than twenty years of experience in life science growth companies, both in operational and board roles.
Riitta Lassila
Chief Scientific & Medical Officer, Co-founder; MD, PhD, Professor
Riitta Lassila
Chief Scientific Officer, Co-founder; MD, PhD, Professor
Riitta is co-founder and CSO of Aplagon.
She is also Head of the Coagulation Disorders Unit at Helsinki University Hospital and Professor in Coagulation Medicine at Helsinki University.
Riitta trained in internal medicine and has many years of experience across thrombosis and haemostasis research; she was previously a group leader at the Wihuri Research Institute in Helsinki. She is the author of over 300 peer-reviewed publications, review articles and book chapters and an author on Aplagon’s APAC product patents. She has served as a steering committee member of EUHASS and EAHAD, a European hemophilia and allied disorders program. She sits on the advisory boards of several pharmaceutical companies. She is advisor to WHO and Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL). She is an elected member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.
Jarna Hannukainen
Clinical Study Director, PhD
Jarna Hannukainen, PhD
Clinical Study Director
Jarna joined Aplagon as Clinical Study Director in January 2023. She has 20 years of experience in clinical trials in academia and pharmaceutical companies. She has extensive experience in metabolic research using PET imaging. She is an Adjunct Professor, PhD, at the University of Turku, where she led her own research group, before joining pharmaceutical industry in 2017.
Team
Nick Meyers
Project Coordination
Boyd Consultants, VP, Head of Product Development group, > 25 years’ experience in drug development.
Bob Humphries
Clinical Strategy
VisionRealisation, former Project Head for ticagrelor and cangrelor (marketed anti-thrombotics) at AstraZeneca.
Angela Stokes
Regulatory
Sharp Regulatory, former Vice President, Head of Global Regulatory Consulting at Syneos Health.
Emmanuel Klem-Robin
Quality Management
EKR Santé, Quality assurance & compliance expert & auditor with >20 years’ experience.
Annukka Jouppila
CMC Manager
> 10 years’ experience of APAC, responsible for Aplagon’s laboratory, CMC.
Gijs van Dedem
CMC
Advisor, leading heparin expert, co-inventor of heparin analogue Orgaran, former Chief Biochemist at Diosynth, part of the former pharmaceutical division of AKZO.
