Meet the team

Krishna Polu

CEO

Krishna brings a wealth of operating experience to the team with a track record of pipeline advancement and drug approvals across multiple therapeutics areas. Krishna served as a clinical development executive at numerous public companies including Equillium, Affymax and Amgen. In addition, he was part of the founding team and served as Principal at Red Tree Venture Capital, where he supported and co-led investments in firms such as Bicara Therapeutics. Krishna has worked in varying capacities for leading venture capital firms, helping to find and finance companies.Previously, Krishna was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Frazier Healthcare and has now joined Bioqube Ventures as an Executive in Residence. Krishna has an M.D. from the University of Texas Health Science Center and completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Colorado followed by a fellowship in nephrology at Harvard Medical School.

Pascal Merchiers

CDO

Pascal has +30 years of experience in leading drug discovery and preclinical development programs including the follow up on the scientific, IP and BD aspects. Through the course of his career, Pascal has been working in functional genomics, gene therapy and protein drug delivery. He has extensive experience within antibody/nanobody development from his time at Ablynx and within I/O biology from Tusk Therapeutics (acquired by Roche in 2018) and Oncurious NV. Pascal earned his PhD in Biomedical Sciences from KU Leuven. 

Nick S. Laursen

CSO & Co-founder

Nick has extensive experience in antibody characterization and has worked within the field of complement research for more than 15 years. Prior to founding Commit, Nick worked as an Associate Professor at Aarhus University in Denmark where he, together with the other founders, developed the BiCE™ technology.

Dennis V. Pedersen

COO & Co-founder

Dennis has studied the relationship between structure and function of complement proteins for more than 10 years. Dennis has a PhD from Aarhus University in Denmark and has extensive experience within drug development and project management from academic collaborations and biotech industry. Prior to founding Commit, Dennis has worked with structure-based drug discovery at Muna Therapeutics.

Mikael Winkler

CTO & Co-founder

Mikael has a PhD from Aarhus University in Denmark where he studied the structure and function of membrane proteins. He has extensive experience within structural biology, and his work on cholesterol and auxin transporters has been published in the high impact journals Nature and Cell. Following his PhD, Mikael worked together with the other founders on developing the BiCE™ technology.

Heidi Gytz Olesen

Head of Drug Discovery & Co-founder

Heidi has a broad background within the field of molecular biology and obtained her PhD from Aarhus University, where she studied replication of RNA viruses. Heidi has led several industrial research collaborations studying the complement system, including projects for Complement Pharma, Alexion Pharmaceuticals and Argenx.