Geert Jan has 25+ years of pharmaceutical industry experience and joined Santhera at the beginning of 2015. He was instrumental in building the Santhera European Commercial Operations and in the successful European launch of Raxone in LHON. During the last 3 years he was a member of the Santhera management team and served as VP, Head Region Western Europe, which also comprised the management of European Market Access and European Strategic Marketing functions. Since January 2021 he also served as Global Program Lead ad interim for the lonodelestat development program.

Before joining Santhera, Geert Jan held positions as Medical Director, Business Unit Director and General Manager in start-up teams in Serono, Actelion and InterMune. He successfully launched and marketed products in a wide variety of rare and orphan diseases in neurology, pediatric diseases, endocrinology, pulmonology, cardiology, rheumatology, metabolic disease and neuro-ophthalmology. Initially he started to work at Reed-Elsevier’s Excerpta Medica Medical Communications, until he joined the pharmaceutical industry in 1995.

Geert Jan completed his medical studies in Rotterdam with a MD degree in 1992 and he also holds a PhD from Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands.