Areas of expertise: Corporate leadership, fundraising, board governance, strategic planning, therapeutics, diagnostics, regulatory, clinical, business development.
Current role: CEO, Centre for the Commercialization of Antibodies and Biologics, Toronto, ON
Mr. Verhagen brings over 25 years of experience in the life sciences industry specializing in company creation, private and public financing, product development and leading large-scale agreements and partnerships.
As CEO, Robert leads the CCAB, a venture capital organization which identifies commercially viable technologies from academic centres and other institutions to form new companies through the placement of initial seed and bridge financing, hiring executive management and actively engaged in product and corporate development planning. Prior to CCAB, Robert held several positions in the life sciences industry including CEO of Helix Biopharma, a publicly traded, early clinical stage biotechnology company developing novel therapeutics for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer.
Robert was also VP Corporate Development with Spectral Medical Inc. a publicly traded late stage company developing treatments for Sepsis. He led the in-licensing of major development assets, manage global alliances for worldwide development, and the commercialization of several ancillary diagnostic products from the internal pipeline. Robert was the founder and President of INH Technologies Inc., a start up discovery tools company. Robert led the initial financing of the organization led the organization into three alliances with major pharmaceutical companies. INH was then acquired by MDS Inc a global life sciences company where Robert led a number of corporate development initiatives including the integration of new European assets, the formation of the Biomarker Alliance between MDS, Caprion Pharma, Gentris Corporation, and Mass General Hospital.
Robert serves on the boards of two companies, Empirica Therapeutics and ImmunoBioChem. He holds a B.Sc. (Hon) and MBA.