Javier Garcia Ladona

Javier Garcia Ladona is the founder and chief executive officer of Abaxys Therapeutics, based in Brussels. He founded the company in 2015, serving as chief scientific officer for neurosciences between December 2015 and December 2017, and has held the role of chief executive since 2015.

Before that he was at UCB, where he directed the new targets biology group within UCB Pharma from 2009 to 2011 and then led neuroscience partnering from January 2011 until 2015. From 2001 to 2009 he headed the cell biology group in neuroscience discovery at Abbott Laboratories, and from 1992 to 2001 he headed the cell and molecular neurobiology laboratory at Knoll AG, part of BASF Pharma. Earlier, he was a principal investigator at CNRS on a France Alzheimer Foundation project from 1991 to 1992, a postdoctoral scientist in neuropathology at Sandoz from 1990 to 1991, and an EU-grant PhD scientist at the CNRS Center of Neurochemistry from 1987 to 1990.

He holds a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from the Université Louis Pasteur (Strasbourg I), completed between 1987 and 1992, and an MBA in pharmaceutical marketing and management from the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, taken in 2009 and 2010.