Johan Kördel has been elected as board director in Athera Biotechnologies AB, replacing Lennart Hansson who recently retired from Industrifonden.

Professor Gunnar Olsson, former head of AstraZeneca CVD/GI Therapy area remains Chairman of the Board. Otto Skolling and Svein Mathisen remain as board directors for Athera.

“We are very pleased to welcome Johan to the board, where he will further strengthen our focus on industrial business development and international venture financing,” says Chairman Gunnar Olsson.

Kördel trained as a Physical Chemist at University of Lund, Sweden, Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. He is an associate professor in Physical Chemistry at the University of Lund, Sweden. He then joined the Pharmaceutical Industry and worked almost a decade in Pharmacia in Stockholm before he co-founded and worked as Senior Vice President of Research as well as Business Development of Biovitrum AB. Johan continued in Biotech as co-founder and CEO of Sound Biotech ApS and serving on numerous boards, both private and public. Since 2010, Johan has worked as a venture investor into Life Sciences at the Danish Lundbeckfonden. Today he is a board member of Acacia Pharma Ltd., Amplyx Pharmaceuticals Inc., Enterome S.A., Reneo Pharmaceuticals Inc., Saromics Biostructures AB and VHSquared Ltd..