About us

Dr. Volker Lang has more than 20 years of experience in development and commercialization of biotechnology products, encompassing basic research, R&D, business development and licensing, as well as commercial operations and management. Prior to joining AbCheck, Volker served as Chief Business Officer of Affimed Therapeutics AG (now Affimed N.V.), AbCheck’s parent company. Previous positions include Vice President for Corporate Development at Scil Technology GmbH, where he successfully partnered the company’s technology portfolio with two major pharmaceutical companies. Volker was also Vice President of Business Development & Licensing at Pieris AG, where he successfully closed key strategic partnership deals. Prior to Pieris, Volker served as Chief Operating Officer at Cosmix GmbH and Biotech Manager at Fresenius Kabi AG, where he gained considerable CMC and production experience. Volker holds a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Braunschweig, Germany.

Dr. Vera Molkenthin earned her PhDr. in Biology at the University of Mainz, Germany, and has more than ten years of experience in antibody discovery and engineering. Vera was leading the Antibody Discovery group at Affimed Therapeutics AG (now Affimed N.V.) and managed the transfer of the technology to AbCheck in 2009. Since 2010 Vera has a lot of experience in leading partnered projects and is an expert in AbCheck’s expanding technology platforms.

Dr. Oleh Petriv received his MSc in biochemistry from Lviv State University, Ukraine, and a PhD in Cell Biology at the University of Alberta in Canada. After several years of research on the role of lipids in longevity he joined the engineering laboratory led by Dr. Carl Hansen in Vancouver. There he studied design and manufacturing of microfluidic chips, worked on high-throughput single-cell PCR and sequencing methods. Oleh is one of the co-founders of AbCellera, a company focusing on monoclonal antibody discovery based in Canada. In 2018 he brought his experience of R&D and technology development to AbCheck and leads a team of talented researchers developing entirely new and unsurpassed methods of antibody discovery by functional criteria.

Dr. Yuriy Rzhepetskyy earned his PhD in cell biology at the Institute of Cell Biology in Lviv, Ukraine. Most recently he held a postdoc position in the Ion Channels and Diseases Group headed by Dr. Norbert Weiss at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry in Prague, Czech Republic. Yuriy has more than ten years of experience in cell signalling research. He joined AbCheck’s New Technology team in 2018 strengthening our cell biology and membrane protein biochemistry expertise.

Dominik Hinz joined AbCheck in 2014 as the Head of Phage Display supporting the discovery of therapeutic antibodies for customers from the pharmaceutical industry. He received his master's degree in Biotechnology from the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, before joining Prof. Dr. Arne Skerra’s group at the Technical University of Munich as a research associate focussing on generation, engineering and characterization of Anticalins (antibody mimetics). Prior to joining AbCheck Dominik served as R&D scientist at MorphoSys AG for two years, one of the world’s leading biotech companies in the area of fully human antibodies.

Dr. Ahmad Trad earned his Bachelor of Science in biochemistry at the Lebanese University, Lebanon, prior to completing his master's degree in biochemistry at the Institute of Christian Albrechts University of Kiel, Germany where he also earned his PhD in immunology, in the laboratory of Dr. Hilmar Lemke. His thesis project was focused on the effect of Dh gene segment on the diversity of the antibody repertoire. He has generated monoclonal antibodies using hybridoma technology to hapten in transgenic animals harboring single Dh gene. Ahmad worked in the laboratory of Dr. Joachim Grötzinger at the Universiy of Kiel where he focused on the use of anti-ADAM17 monoclonal antibodies to target tumor cells. In addition, Dr. Trad served as head of the monoclonal antibody core facility, generating monoclonal antibodies against different antigens. Since 2014 he is Head of Cell Culture, supporting the therapeutic antibody discovery and establishing novel cell-based assays.

Dr. Peter Milovník joined AbCheck in 2011 as Head of Protein Production. He also lead antibody engineering projects, worked as project lead for phage display customer projects and was involved in the development of the Rabbit Mass Humanization platform. In 2018 Peter transitioned to the New Technology Development team. He received his master's degree in chemistry from the Slovak Technical University in Bratislava, Slovakia, and PhD in biochemistry from the University of Bayreuth, Germany. He joined the lab of Prof. Andreas Plückthun at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, as a postdoc and worked on the development of protein engineering and selection techniques for in vitro evolution of GPCRs. Furthermore, Peter worked on directed enzyme evolution in the group of Prof. Don Hilvert at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and as a senior scientist in the bioanalytical assay development for Celerion Switzerland AG.

Dr. Michael Tomaszowski earned his PhD in Biochemistry at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, in the group of Prof. Dr. Harald Kolmar. He has more than ten years of experience in protein and antibody engineering with the yeast display technology. He joined Abcheck in 2011 as head of the Yeast Display Group and has established and expanded the yeast display technology platform, which has been used successfully in numerous partnered projects.