Christian Schade joins Aprea AB

Swedish biopharmaceutical firm Aprea AB has appointed Christian Schade as its president and chief executive officer.

Schade joins Aprea's Boston, Massachusetts office, bringing over 30 years of pharma and biotech industry experience, as well as corporate finance expertise, to his new role.

Most recently, Schade served as chief executive officer of Novira Therapeutics, which was acquired by Johnson & Johnson at the end of last year.

Prior to this, he worked at Omthera, a specialty dyslipidemia-focused pharmaceutical company, as executive vice president and chief financial officer during which time, Schade oversaw Omthera's sale to AstraZeneca.

Schade has also served as executive vice president and chief financial officer at Energy, and was senior vice president of administration and chief financial officer at Medarex where he led negotiations for the company's acquisition by Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Bernd Seizinger, chairman of Aprea's board of directors, said: “I am delighted to welcome Chris to Aprea.

“He is an accomplished biopharmaceutical executive with proven experience leading companies through times of change and growth.

“He will be an important asset to Aprea as we continue to develop novel anticancer therapies targeting the tumour suppressor protein, p53.

“Furthermore, Chris has excellent credentials to build a strategic leadership team in the US to complement the R&D activities of the team in Sweden.”