Eric (1957) is SMBWO board certified Immunologist and family man, 20% academic and 70% sequential entrepreneur. He was also the winner of the Dutch 1 million Euro NGI Valorisation Award for ‘Excellent deal making with Industry”. Eric successfully founded and sold a number of Dutch Biotech firms among which Viroclinics Biosciences BV in 2017.
He is Executive Advisor of Raymond James Investment Banking Ltd. He is founder and CEO of ViroNovative BV and an investor in over 15 Dutch Biotech startup’s. His investments and advisory work are performed from Medifocus Lelystad (consulting) B.V’s. He is co-founder and CBO of Genewity B.V. also of Rabian B.V. and personal advisor to the CEO of Freya Pharmasolutions B.V. He is chairperson/president of CR2O and he was Chairman of the Probiotic Advisory Board of Pfizer Consumer Health (USA) and currently is Chairman of the SAB of Christian Hansen A/S (Denmark). Eric was also chairman of NATO PG32 (CTS clearance and need to know) on “Handheld detection of Biological Weapons”.
Eric was professor of Immunology at ErasmusMC from 1994-2004 and professor of Valorisation at ErasmusMC from 2004-2015. In 2001 he was also appointed as the first Biopartner professor “Entrepreneurship in the Life Sciences” on behalf of the Ministry of Economic Affairs at the Athena Institute, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. This chair, which he still holds, was transformed in 2005 to “Business management and Entrepreneurship in Health & Life Sciences” with a Tenure Full Professorship (0.4 FTE ending in July 2024). He teaches Business Management, Entrepreneurship, Clinical Trials and Strategic Financing. In 2024 eight PhD students are working under his direct guidance at the cross roads of Medical/Life Sciences, Valorization, Innovation, Business development and IP management.
He supervised/completed around 40 PhD’s. Eric is senior author on almost 300 peer reviewed papers and patents (highly quoted and h-index of 60; https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Gw0tMgkAAAAJ&hl=nl).
Recently, Eric published/edited a book on “Microbiota in health and disease: from pregnancy to childhood” (2018) and “Immunological recognition of peptides in Medicine and Biology” at CRC publishers. In 2019 he published “Gezond naar 115” or translated “Healthy towards 115” in Dutch (!) a book for the general public on healthy aging.
Eric (happily) remarried (with Conny Kruyssen; CFO), after his wife Dr. Suzan Jeurissen died of breast cancer, and he has three sons and three daughters (ranging 1987-1997).
Affiliation please use:
Academic:
Prof dr Eric Claassen, Athena Institute VU Amsterdam
Business:
Eric Claassen PhD, CEO Vironovative B.V. and Medifocus Lelystad B.V.