CEO and Executive Director

Annegret van der Aa, PhD

Annegret Van der Aa has joined Cantoni Therapeutics since July 2024 as Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director. She is a seasoned strategical and operational R&D leader and brings over 20 years of drug discovery and development experience. Annegret held various leadership positions in both mid-size and start up biotech companies. Before joining Cantoni Therapeutics, she was CSO/CDO at Ermium Therapeutics (France), a discovery stage company working on small molecules targeting complex autoimmune diseases, and COO at OCTIMET Oncology (Belgium), a clinical-stage company developing MET kinase inhibitors for precision oncology indications. Between 2010 and 2018, she was at Galapagos (Belgium) and took up different positions in the Development organisation, transitioning more than 10 preclinical compounds to clinical stage and she was instrumental in the clinical development of Jyseleca® (filgotinib), approved for a first indication in 2020. Before, she was Project Leader at ActoGeniX (now Precigen ActoBio) and Unit Manager Immunology at Innogenetics (now Fujirebio). Annegret holds a Master in Biochemistry from University Antwerp and a PhD in Biomedical Sciences – Immunology from University Hasselt.

Chief Scientific Officer and Founder

Matthijs van Haren, PhD

Matthijs van Haren is currently Chief Scientific Officer and Founder, and part of Cantoni Therapeutics since he co-founded the company in 2022. He holds an MSc in Chemistry and a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from Utrecht University. His PhD work focussed on the development of small molecule inhibitors of methyltransferase enzymes for the treatment of metabolic disease and oncology. He subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University on combatting antimicrobial resistance mechanisms through small molecule inhibition of metallo-beta-lactamase enzymes. Matthijs has over a decade of experience working on small molecule inhibitor development and in vitro and in vivo target validation and is co-inventor on the patents that resulted from his PhD and postdoctoral research, including the patent underlying Cantoni’s assets. He is also part of the recently awarded NWO Open Technology grant of 1 M€ to further expand Cantoni's portfolio of small molecule inhibitors of nicotinamide N-methyltransferase in collaboration with Leiden University and the Dutch Cancer Institute.

Non-Executive Director

Rob Mayfield

Rob Mayfield is Non-Executive Director at Cantoni Therapeutics. He is the Managing Director of the Leiden University Holding company, Libertatis Ergo Holding B.V. (LEH), responsible for structuring and investing in spinouts and startups associated with the activities of Leiden University and the LUMC academic hospital. LEH has a growing portfolio of about 40 companies primarily in Life Science and Health, Biotech, Medtech and digital health as well as some physical sciences. Rob was the former Director of the Tech Transfer office of Leiden University and LUMC, former Investment Principal of a global energy VC fund for 9 years (AUM $1Bln), former CEO and entrepreneur in various different industry sectors, and serves on the Board of many startup companies, and as an advisor to other investment funds. He has been directly involved in more than 100 startup companies in different countries, over a 20-year period. Rob holds an engineering degree from Edinburgh University, and an MBA from INSEAD.

Non-Executive Director

Helmuth van Es, PhD

Helmuth van Es is Non-Executive Director at Cantoni Therapeutics. He has more than 30 years of experience in the health and life sciences as a scientist, inventor and entrepreneur. He obtained an MSc in Biology/Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Medicine from the University of Amsterdam. Subsequently he was a postdoctoral researcher at Einstein College in New York, and later at McGill University in Montreal. He started his biotech career as a senior scientist at IntroGene, Crucell (now part of J&J). He then co-founded Galapagos, where he was Head of Science of the Leiden site until 2006. Thereafter, Helmuth co-founded Audion Therapeutics BV, a pioneering clinical stage, regenerative medicine company focusing on treating acquired hearing loss and Effecta Pharma Ltd, discovering antivirals for Dengue and related viruses. He is also co-founder, and was CBO and NED of Antabio in France, UK, USA, a clinical stage company focusing on a new generation of anti-bacterials combatting antibiotic drug resistance. In 2015 he co-founded Citryll in the Netherlands, now a clinical stage company targeting the process of NETosis to treat inflammatory diseases, where he was CEO and Executive Director until March 2023. He advised and is advising a number of companies including Citryll, Hifibio and UPyTher.

CEO and Executive Director

Annegret van der Aa, PhD

Annegret Van der Aa has joined Cantoni Therapeutics since July 2024 as Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director. She is a seasoned strategical and operational R&D leader and brings over 20 years of drug discovery and development experience. Annegret held various leadership positions in both mid-size and start up biotech companies. Before joining Cantoni Therapeutics, she was CSO/CDO at Ermium Therapeutics (France), a discovery stage company working on small molecules targeting complex autoimmune diseases, and COO at OCTIMET Oncology (Belgium), a clinical-stage company developing MET kinase inhibitors for precision oncology indications. Between 2010 and 2018, she was at Galapagos (Belgium) and took up different positions in the Development organisation, transitioning more than 10 preclinical compounds to clinical stage and she was instrumental in the clinical development of Jyseleca® (filgotinib), approved for a first indication in 2020. Before, she was Project Leader at ActoGeniX (now Precigen ActoBio) and Unit Manager Immunology at Innogenetics (now Fujirebio). Annegret holds a Master in Biochemistry from University Antwerp and a PhD in Biomedical Sciences – Immunology from University Hasselt.

Founder and Chair SAB

Nathaniel Martin, PhD

Professor Nathaniel Martin is Founder and Scientific Advisor of Cantoni Therapeutics. He holds a chair in Biological Chemistry in the Institute of Biology Leiden at Leiden University (The Netherlands). For more than a decade Prof. Martin’s group has been at the forefront of NNMT biochemistry, pioneering the first potent and selective small molecule NNMT inhibitors. In 2022, he co-founded Cantoni Therapeutics with the aim of exploring the translational potential of the NNMT inhibitors discovered in his academic lab and moving them toward the clinic. Prof. Martin has received a number of prestigious grants and awards in support of his research from the European Research Council (ERC) and the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO). To date, Prof. Martin has published 138 peer-reviewed research papers and is named inventor on 10 patents. Since 2023 Prof. Martin is also associate editor for the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (US)

Barbara Kahn, MD, MS

Dr. Barbara B. Kahn is an endocrinologist and the George Richards Minot professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School (US). She is also the Vice Chair for Research Strategy in the department of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and former Chief of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism. She received the Banting Medal from the American Diabetes Association and the Gerald Aurbach Award from the Endocrine Society. In 2025, she will receive the Albert Renold Award from the American Diabetes Association and the Roy Greep Award from the Endocrine Society. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Clinical Endocrinologist at UZ Leuven (BE)

Roman Vangoitsenhoven, MD, PhD

Dr. Roman Vangoitsenhoven is Assistant Professor at KU (Catholic University) Leuven (Belgium) and a clinical endocrinologist at UZ (University Hospital) Leuven, with a special interest in obesity and type 2 diabetes. His research work has been awarded by the Belgian Endocrine Society with the Young Investigator Award, by the European Association for the Study of Obesity with the New Investigator Award Basic Science, and the Novo Nordisk prize for Diabetology.

Professor of Translational Drug Research at Goethe University Frankfurt (DE)

Aimo Kannt, PhD

Aimo Kannt is a biochemist, pharmacologist and Professor of Translational Drug Research at Goethe University Frankfurt (Germany) and Head of Drug Discovery and Preclinical Research at the Fraunhofer Institute for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology. Aimo has more than 20 years of experience as a drug hunter at Sanofi and predecessor companies in R&D for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. He has made substantial contributions to unraveling the role of NNMT in disease biology and has led major programs to identify and characterize different classes of NNMT inhibitors.

Associate Professor Immunometabolism at LUMC (NL)

Bruno Guigas, PhD

Bruno Guigas is a molecular biologist and Associate Professor at the Leiden University Medical Center (the Netherlands). His research group is focusing on immunometabolism, aiming to identify new druggable molecules and/or molecular targets involved in the immune regulation of metabolic homeostasis in the context of obesity, type 2 diabetes, MASLD/MASH and infection. Bruno is involved in several international collaborations on multidisciplinary projects dealing with metabolic disorders and has co-authored >120 publications.