Healthcare >> CEO Interviews >> September 13, 2002
JEAN-PAUL CLOZEL is Chief Executive Officer of Actelion AG. He is a
cardiologist educated in France, with further training in pharmacology
and physiology at the University of Montreal, Canada, and the University
of California, San Francisco. After 11 years as a clinician, he decided
to move to applied research. During his 12 years at F. Hoffmann-La
Roche, he was responsible for the selection and pre-clinical development
of drugs such as the first T-channel blocker, renin inhibitors and
several endothelin receptor antagonists such as bosentan. The group he
was heading discovered seven compounds that entered clinical trials. He
has developed various novel experimental models allowing the
differentiation of these drugs, work honored with the 1997 Hoffmann-La
Roche Research Prize. At the end of 1997, he founded Actelion, together
with his wife Martine and work colleagues and friends Walter Fischli and
Thomas Widmann. First, mainly focusing on Research and Development, he
became CEO of the company to bring Actelion to the public in April 2000.
During his 25-year career in cardiology, he has published widely in
peer-reviewed medical and scientific journals. In the same time, his
passion has remained unchanged: being as closely as possible involved in
bringing innovative medicine to 'his' patients. Profile
introduction to Actelion?
Mr. Clozel: Actelion is a biopharmaceutical company, which was basically
founded five years
