Amarna Therapeutics Assigns Dr Henk Streefkerk As New CEO

Amarna Therapeutics, a privately held biotechnology company, has named Dr Henk Streefkerk as its new chief executive officer and medical director. He takes over for Steen Klysner, who has been CEO for the past three years. Since mid-2022, Streefkerk has served as Amarna's Medical Director. Dr. Streefkerk has a distinguished career as the CMO of several biotechs, including PIQUR Therapeutics, Cellprotera, and Rivia, as well as over a decade of experience working in big pharma at Novartis, Actelion, and Organon. He led the global product safety team for a heart failure drug as a clinical pharmacologist/safety leader, overseeing safety analyses, regulatory submissions, and post-marketing safety surveillance.

He also played a significant role in the approval of an anti-cancer drug. He began his medical career in otorhinolaryngology and holds both an MD and a PhD. “We are very pleased to introduce Henk Streefkerk as our new CEO. As a Physician Scientist he brings to Amarna a broad and extensive experience in clinical development, health authority negotiations, and other regulatory interactions. Henk will be instrumental in leading Amarna towards the first in human clinical trial,” said Thomas Eldered, chairman of Amarna’s supervisory board. “I’m thrilled to be joining Amarna as CEO.

The company’s team has been working very hard to generate solid translational data. I look forward to work with them on this next phase of bringing Amarna’s personalized gene therapy product to hemophilia B patients and proving the potential of repeat dosing,” said Henk Streefkerk. Amarna Therapeutics is a privately held biotech company developing multiple-dose gene therapies to treat patients with genetic and idiopathic diseases, focusing first on hemophilia B. The company’s SVec gene delivery vector platform derived from the macaque polyomavirus SV40 is by design non-immunogenic and tolerogenic in humans inducing long-term transgene expression in patients with the possibility of repeated administration.