- Their appointment was initiated by the outgoing board of directors. The four new members will bring many years of experience in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry, especially in research and development, pharmaceutical strategy and regulatory affairs.
Zurich, April 17, 2025 – MetrioPharm AG, a biotech company developing drugs for inflammatory and infectious diseases, announced today that four new members were elected to the Board of Directors at an Extraordinary General Meeting on April 25, 2025. The new members are Dr. Harald Fricke, Dr. Martina Muttke, Dr. Stephan Rietiker and Dr. Jörg Zwicker. The board members Jörg Gruber and Christoph von Moos will be remaining on the board.
The Board of Directors will continue to consist of six members. The former chairman Rudolf Stäger, as well as Ekkehard Brysch, Dr. Werner Wolf and Markus Wenner stepped down.
“We have prepared the realignment of the Board of Directors for many months,” commented Rudolf Stäger, ”and are pleased that such a highly qualified body will now be responsible for the further clinical development and, going forward, the path to an exit. On behalf of all departing board members, I would like to thank MetrioPharm’s management and team for the good collaboration and our shareholders for their many years of trust. I would also like to thank my colleagues on the board for their consistently positive and constructive contributions. We wish the new board an excellent start and much success.”
The new members of the board of directors are:
Dr. Harald Fricke is a habilitated physician and independent business consultant focusing on strategic support for small and medium-sized pharmaceutical companies in research and development. Dr. Fricke has more than 25 years of international management experience in pharmaceutical R&D, regulatory strategy and translational medicine. He has held leading positions at GlaxoSmithKline, Baxter Oncology, Fresenius Biotech, Apogenix and Sotio Biotech. He developed and managed global clinical projects and multicultural teams in Europe, the United States and Asia, overseeing extensive R&D budgets. As co-founder of Apogenix, Saarmetrics, and the Motion Capture Group, he is driving innovation in pharmacometrics (especially orphan diseases) and digital health, with a particular focus on AI-based diagnostics and data-driven development.
Dr. Martina Muttke is an established global business leader with over 25 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. She has held senior positions in global companies, including Senior Vice President at Galderma. Prior to that, she was Group Vice President at Shire/Takeda. Her extensive international experience spans Europe, Latin America and global markets, with leadership roles at Bayer and other major healthcare companies. Dr. Muttke is now a partner at Coulter Partners, where she advises and supports boards and C-suite executives on building high-performing management teams and shaping organizational strategies. She holds a doctorate in medicine from the University of Cologne and completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. She is also an ICF-certified executive coach and investor & advisor to biotech and healthcare startups.
Stephan Rietiker, MD, is a trained physician licensed to practice in both Switzerland and the United States. He has held senior management positions at various global pharmaceutical and medical technology companies, including Roche, Boehringer Mannheim, Schering Plough, Covance, Centerpulse and LifeWatch, which have earned him a strong reputation as a versatile and successful manager with extensive experience in the US economy. After turning around LifeWatch and successfully selling the company to BioTelemetry Inc., Dr. Rietiker joined the board of BioTelemetry, where he actively supported the acquisition of BioTelemetry Inc. by Philips for $2.8 billion in 2021. In 2022, he founded EpiLunar Partners AG, based in Zug, Switzerland, to invest in and develop market-ready, groundbreaking solutions in the digital health sector.
Dr. Jörk Zwicker has a technical background in chemistry and biology and is a senior partner at Zwicker Schnappauf & Partner (ZSP) Patentanwälte PartG mbB. For more than 25 years, he has been advising both start-up companies and large corporations on the strategic development, defense and enforcement of their intellectual property rights, in particular patents for biological agents such as Praluent®, Dupixent®, Toujeo®, Altuvoct®, Gohibic® and Enjaymo®. In the strategic development of product-relevant intellectual property portfolios, Dr. Zwicker’s focus is on life cycle management and the interaction between patent and regulatory law. Dr. Zwicker is also Chief Legal Officer of Eisbach Bio GmbH.
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About MetrioPharm AG
MetrioPharm AG is a private, clinical-stage biotech company focused on therapies for inflammatory and infectious diseases.
MetrioPharm targets the modulation of immune metabolism with first-in-class self-regulating drug candidates. The Company ́s platform has generated small-molecule metabolic modulators that have demonstrated pre-clinical and clinical efficacy in a wide range of inflammatory and infective diseases with an outstanding safety profile.
Based on this core technology, MetrioPharm has created a pipeline of disease-specific drug combinations targeting inflammatory, autoimmune, and degenerative diseases. Preclinical and clinical efficacy data have been obtained in multiple sclerosis, arthritis, sepsis, inflammatory bowel disease and psoriasis. The Company is currently exploring several orphan indications with Duchenne muscular dystrophy as its lead indication.
In a second line of development, MetrioPharm is developing its technology to target infectious diseases such as COVID-19 – also as a proof of concept to improve pandemic preparedness. Supported by a grant from the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), a Phase IIa exploratory study evaluated the effect on hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The study confirmed the good clinical safety profile of MP1032 and demonstrated compelling efficacy data.
The Company is headquartered in Zurich and has a subsidiary for R&D activities in Berlin.
Forward-looking statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties and are consistent with MetrioPharm AG’s assessment as of the date of this release. Such forward- looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees but are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties. No liability or warranty, and no claim, if any, is made with respect to the timeliness, accuracy or completeness of such data and information, and no reliance should be placed on such data and information, either explicitly or impliedly.
Contacts
MetrioPharm
Corporate Communications & Press Relations
presse@metriopharm.com
Phone +41 44 552 7198
akampion
Dr. Ludger Wess / Ines-Regina Buth
Managing Partners
info@akampion.com
Tel. +49 40 88 16 59 64 /
Tel. +49 30 23 63 27 68
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