Annegret Van der Aa is a seasoned strategical and operational R&D leader and brings nearly 25 years of drug discovery and development experience. Annegret held various leadership positions in both mid-size and start up biotech companies and has a passion to ‘build’ teams, departments, companies, by bringing together talented professionals to move programs forward in the most efficient way.

Since July 2024 she has joined Cantoni Therapeutics (Oss, NL) as Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director. Before, 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 (Belgium).