Team
& Founding Members
Benoit Moreaux, DVM, PhD
Chief Executive Officer
Benoit Moreaux has more than 25 years of experience in a variety of positions within pharmaceutical and medical device development (solutions, disposables and dialysis device) with responsibilities in the field of research and development (3 NMEs in phase I), quality assurance, regulatory affairs and manufacturing. Moreover, Benoit has more than 8 years experience at C-level as CSO, CTO & COO in biotech and medtech companies.
An Van Den Bulcke, PhD
Chief Business Officer/Chief Operations Officer & Co-founder
An Van Den Bulcke holds a PhD in Polymer Chemistry and has an industrial career in product development and R&D management. In 2011 she started as Business Developer at ChemTech valorisation cluster of Ghent University. At UGent, she was responsible for technology transfer and exploitation of new research findings to market-ready technologies and products. Within 4Tissue, An is in charge of operations, manages the strategic IP portfolio and sets up partnerships and out-licensing opportunities.
Els Hubloux
Chief Financial Officer
Prior to joining 4Tissue as CFO, Els was a Partner at Newton Biocapital Partners. She has over 28 years of experience in the life sciences sector, of which 22 years as a venture capital professional. She has been a director of various life sciences and medtech companies. Els holds a Master's degree in chemical engineering.
Phillip Blondeel, MD, PhD
Clinical Expert & Co-founder
Prof. Phillip Blondeel is an internationally leading expert on aesthetic and reconstructive breast surgery and one of the pioneers in the so-called "perforator flap" surgery. He is Professor of Plastic Surgery and head of the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Ghent University Hospital, Belgium. Prof. Dr. Blondeel has also authored and co-authored numerous books, book chapters and peer reviewed articles. At the end of 2011, Prof. Dr. Blondeel led the team that performed the first face transplant in Belgium (#19 worldwide) and is the Chairman of the Vascularized Composite Tissue Allograft Program at the Ghent University Hospital.
Sandra Van Vlierberghe, PhD
Scientific Expert & Co-founder
Prof. Sandra Van Vlierberghe her research targets to establish "a polymer-based technological platform covering processing and functionalization aspects sufficiently versatile to potentially address a wide range of tissue engineering (TE) challenges". Indeed, her research focuses on the synthesis and the characterization of (crosslinkable) polymers and their processing capabilities. She has acquired expertise related to the synthesis, the modification and the processing (through 3D printing, electrospinning and two-photon polymerization (2PP)) of a variety of (bio)polymers including thermoplastics (e.g. polyesters) and hydrogels (e.g. proteins and polysaccharides) in the field of regenerative medicine during the last 15 years. She authored more than 250 Web of Science Core Collection cited papers of which 146 high impact journal papers. She is treasurer of the Belgian Polymer Group (BPG), former spokesperson of the YSF which is affiliated to the ESB, secretary of the 'Belgian Society for Tissue Engineering' and council member of TERMIS-EU and ESB. In 2017, she received the Jean Leray Award from the European Society for Biomaterials. This award is established to recognize outstanding research in the field of biomaterials by scientists not older than 40 years.
Bernard Depypere, MD
Medical Expert & Co-founder
Bernard Depypere received his medical degree from the University of Ghent. He started his training to become Plastic & Reconstructive Surgeon in 2013 and is now part of the department of Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery in Ghent. He is a founding member of the Flanders Youth Society for Entrepreneurship (FLYSE), a student society encouraging entrepreneurship. During his medical training he was selected to attend a summer school in designing next generation medical devices at the Trinity Centre for Bioengineering in Trinity College Dublin as part of the European Society for Engineering and Medicine (ESEM). Today, he is a PhD-candidate and co-author of several articles in first quartile journals in the discipline of Plastic & Reconstructive surgery. Two articles have survival of the fat graft as the main topic.
Lana Van Damme, MD, PhD
Head of Technology & Co-founder
Lana Van Damme received her medical degree from the University of Ghent, where she will start her residency in the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in 2023. In 2018, she obtained an FWO SB mandate for an interdisciplinary PhD project between the faculty of Sciences of Ghent University in the Polymer Chemistry & Biomaterials Research group (PBM) and the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. She has published 3 Q1 articles, as well as co-authored 2 Q1 articles, in the first 2 years.