Company Overview

A track record built for value creation - As Head of European Healthcare Equity Research at Goldman Sachs, he led primary coverage of diversified pharma companies with a combined market capitalisation exceeding $335 billion, generating top-quartile alpha for institutional clients. At McKinsey & Company, he led engagements across buy-side diligence, R&D productivity, and corporate strategy for large-cap pharma, private equity, and innovation-driven sectors. At GlaxoSmithKline, he served as commercial strategy lead on transactions totalling over $3.8 billion, including the $2.1 billion ofatumumab licensing deal with Genmab and the $1.5 billion development alliance with Chemocentryx.

He subsequently co-founded and led two biotech companies as CEO. At Sutura Therapeutics, he raised an £11 million Series A to advance a gene medicine platform into preclinical development for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. At UTILITY Therapeutics, he took an in-licensed anti-infective from initial agreement to IND in eight months, secured QIDP designation providing over ten years of market exclusivity, and negotiated an FDA pathway that eliminated $20 million in clinical costs. Across his career, he has raised approximately $40 million in equity capital for biotech companies and led or co-led licensing and M&A transactions across multiple modalities and therapeutic areas.

He holds an MA in Mathematics from the University of Oxford and is a Chartered Management Accountant (ACMA). He serves concurrently as Non-Executive Chair of AMPLY Discovery, an AI/ML drug discovery company spun out of Queen's University Belfast, and Chair of PFU Therapeutics, a next-generation RNA therapeutics company focused on rare diseases.

His combination of institutional investment expertise, strategic consulting pedigree, and repeated experience building biotech companies from scratch positions him to lead Santero through its critical value inflection points and into clinical development.

A track record built for pipeline delivery. At Nosopharm, she was a key architect of the Odilorhabdin programme, a first-in-class antibacterial family with a novel ribosomal mechanism of action. Over nearly a decade, she progressed from Senior Research Scientist to Head of Non-Clinical Development and member of the executive management team, driving the selection of four lead compounds and one compound to Phase 1 readiness. She led all medicinal chemistry activities, coordinated multi-disciplinary programs integrating chemistry, structural biology, microbiology, pharmacology, DMPK, and toxicology, and managed preclinical CMC development. Operating within a lean biotech, she built an extensive network of CRO and academic partnerships across Europe, the US, and Asia. She is co-inventor on five patent families and co-author of 18 peer-reviewed publications.

She also led Nosopharm's participation in three IMI/IHI programmes: ND4BB/ENABLE (2015–2018) and two projects within the IMI AMR Accelerator/GNA-NOW (2019–2023), coordinating international teams across academic institutions, SMEs, and EFPIA companies. She is recognised across the European antibacterial community as an outstanding project leader, combining scientific rigour with the ability to federate multi-national, multi-disciplinary teams.

As COO and Head of Chemistry at Santero, she oversees R&D operations and drives cross-functional execution across computational chemistry, medicinal chemistry, screening, and preclinical teams. She leads the chemistry strategy, manages CRO partnerships, and works closely with the CEO to align operational delivery with the company's strategic and fundraising milestones.

Her combination of hands-on drug discovery expertise, preclinical development experience, and proven ability to deliver compounds through complex multi-partner programmes with limited resources positions her to drive Santero's pipeline through its critical preclinical and early clinical milestones.

A track record built for value creation - He spent thirteen years as Director of Bacteriology and Head of Animal Research at AiCuris AG - a company acquired by Asahi Kasei for approximately €780 million, anchored by two antiviral programs he helped advance. He subsequently joined Janssen Pharmaceuticals NV (Belgium) as Director of Infectious Disease Discovery & Translational Science for over 2 years, leading cross-border pipeline programs within one of the world's largest pharmaceutical organisations. He concurrently serves as interim CSO at Selmod GmbH, a Basel-based antibacterial and antifungal start-up. His academic foundation as NIH Fellow and Assistant Professor at UMass Medical School provides the translational and regulatory fluency that bridges discovery science with clinical development.

 Beyond the science, Dr. Vuong brings rare ability to unlock non-dilutive European funding, having led IMI consortia (2015–2022), the Train2Target European network (2017–2020), and RESPIRI-NTM (2022–2024) - coordinating multi-institutional teams, managing complex budgets, and ensuring EU compliance and milestone delivery across a decade of public-private partnerships. 

 His combination of exit pedigree, EU funding expertise, and deep experience across Pseudomonas aeruginosa and MDR pathogens positions him to lead Santero's RSH inhibitor programme toward its first major value inflection point.

Her pharmaceutical career began at Merck Sharp & Dohme before she spent a decade across Solvay Pharma, Abbott, and Mylan as Product Manager for cardiovascular, gastroenterology, and women's health portfolios, including notably Vasexten, Creon, and Femoston. She designed product strategies, led launches, managed key opinion leaders, coordinated international congresses, and ultimately took on hospital responsibilities as Project Manager — a combination of strategic and operational accountability that few marketing profiles can claim.

She brought that same combination of skills to Santero, where she has been the connective tissue holding multiple workstreams together since the company's earliest days. As Chief of Staff and member of the Executive Team, her remit is unusually broad — spanning human resources, communications, brand identity, financial operations, office management, event organisation, and governance management.

What sets her apart is not only her expertise in managing complex projects or her ability to craft compelling communications, it is her judgment. She knows when to push, when to listen, and when execution must take precedence over strategy.

Valérie is a driving force in building a high-performance culture at Santero; one rooted in collaboration, accountability, and shared purpose.