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Founding team and scientific lead

Clinical oncology and translational AI, and the work of building the company and its partnerships.

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Stefan Munker, Ekkehard Leberer, Grzegorz Popowicz and Niklas Laasch in lab coats in the laboratory at BioM
From left: Stefan Munker, Ekkehard Leberer, Grzegorz Popowicz, Niklas Laasch. In the laboratory at BioM in Planegg-Martinsried, 29 September 2026.

  1. PD Dr. Stefan Munker

    Project lead · CEO designate

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    Physician scientist in gastroenterology and hepatology at LMU Klinikum. Responsible for the clinical question, the tumouroid biobank and translational validation. The biobank’s tumouroid lines were grown from patient tissue in his research group. Co-author of the preprint Kienlein et al. (bioRxiv 2026).

  2. Niklas Laasch

    Venture development · CBO designate

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    Responsible for partnering, the data room and fundraising preparation. Biochemist (MSc, FU Berlin and Oxford), more than ten years in venture building for biotech and digital health. Before that Chief Commercialization Officer at mujō lab and Digital Innovation at Boehringer Ingelheim.

  3. Dr. Maximilian Kienlein

    Postdoc in physics and ML · CTO designate

    Physicist with a doctorate from LMU Munich. Technical lead of BEAM: architecture, training and MLOps of the stack. First author of the team’s preprint Kienlein et al. (bioRxiv 2026).

Advisors

  1. Dr. Grzegorz Popowicz

    Advisor · Scientific lead, AI

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    Structure-based drug discovery, structural biology and translational AI at the Institute of Structural Biology, Helmholtz Munich. Co-author of several patents and an experienced founder. His group’s work on protein-protein interactions appeared in Science in 2017 (Dawidowski et al.). Leads the further development of the BEAM line and brings the laboratory and network of Helmholtz Munich into the project. Corresponding author of the team’s preprint.

  2. Prof. Dr. Ekkehard Leberer

    Advisor · Business and alliance strategy

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    Advises Oncera on the business model and on alliances with the pharmaceutical industry. 27 years in pharmaceutical development at Hoechst, Aventis and Sanofi, most recently as Global Alliance Manager in research and development. Led the IMI consortium COMPACT on the delivery of biopharmaceuticals across biological barriers. Founder of the consultancy ELBIOCON.

  3. Dr. Sandeep Kumar

    Advisor · Protein design and AI drug discovery

    Co-founder and CTO of a TechBio start-up, and a consultant in protein design and AI-driven drug discovery. Until April 2025 a Distinguished Fellow at Moderna, where he led molecular modelling and biodesign. Advises Oncera on library development and affinity maturation.

  4. Prof. Dr. Katja Hanack

    Advisor · Immunotechnology

    LinkedIn

    Holds the endowed professorship of immunotechnology at the University of Potsdam. Founder and CEO of new/era/mabs, spun out of the university in 2014; the company develops antibodies with SELMA, the selection technology her group built. Consultant to Stanford University’s SPARK programme. At Oncera, for antibody production.

Publications

From our team.

Network and advisors

The technology transfer offices of the Munich research institutions the project comes from, the regional biotech network, an industry and CRO network for validation and synthesis, and a scientific advisory circle of professors, most of them from Munich research institutions. Partners and advisors are named here as soon as each has agreed to be listed.

Talk to us about a co-development project

The best fit is a surface target that abundance-driven screening keeps missing, early enough in a programme to still de-risk it.

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