Management profiles

 

Michael Lofthagen, Founder & CEO  

Michael Lofthagen has more than two decades of experience from the pharmaceutical industry.  After completing his B.Sc. degree in organic chemistry at the University of Lund, Sweden in 1985 Michael joined Ferring Pharmaceutical  where he worked on route discovery for the nona-petide DDAVP. He then completed a PhD in Jay Siegels Group at the University of California, San Diego and graduated in 1992. Michael returned to Sweden to take a position in the Process R&D group at AstraZeneca (formerly Astra) where he worked to bring new drugs to market such as Nexium and Oxeeze TBH.  In 1998, Michael Lofthagen and Paul Alhadeff started Syntagon.

michael.lofthagen@syntagon.se

 



Paul Alhadeff, Founder & General manager

Paul Alhadeff has more than two decades of industry experience with Pharmacia, AstraZeneca and Syntagon . Paul completed his B.Sc. degree in organic chemistry at the University of Stockholm, Sweden, in 1989. During his career, he has worked to bring several new drugs to the market including Oxeeze TBH and Symicort.  Paul was also instrumental in driving the technology transfer process of API manufacturing from R&D to production scale. In addition, he was in charge of the outsourcing of several processes and set up new standards for outsourcing within AstraZeneca (formerly Astra). In 1998, Paul Alhadeff and Michael Lofthagen started Syntagon.

paul.alhadeff@syntagon.se

 


Andis Slaitas, Site Manager Latvia

In January 2005, Andis joined Syntagon as a site manager for the new Syntagon site in Latvia and has full responsibility for all production, management and operations. Andis finalized his Ph.D. in organic and medicinal chemistry at Karolinska Institute, Sweden in 2002. From 2002 until 2005 Andis worked at AstraZeneca as senior research scientist at the department of preclinical chemistry. During this time Andis was the most productive medicinal chemist at AstraZeneca in Sweden, having made over 100 compounds. Andis is fluent in five languages including English, Latvian and Russian.

andis.slaitas@syntagon.lv

 



 
 

John Cameron, Director of Sales & Marketing Europe

John has 14 years of commercial experience from the biotechnology industry. He completed his Ph.D. degree in molecular biology and biochemistry at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1995. After a period of post-doctoral research at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, John moved into various sales and marketing roles in the U.K., U.S. and Sweden with companies such as Stratagene, Life Technologies and Invitrogen. John joined Syntagon in January 2008 and has full responsibility for driving our sales and marketing strategies to pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers throughout Europe.

john.cameron@syntagon.se

 
 

Mattias Forsgren, Site manager Sweden

Mattias completed his M.Sc. degree in organic chemistry at the University of Umeå, Sweden, in 1998. Mattias joined Syntagon in February 1999 as an Organic Chemist.  In 2002 he was promoted to Head of Analytical Chemistry.  In 2007, Mattias was promoted to Head of Operations where he assumed responsibility for organic chemistry, analytical chemistry and project management.

mattias.forsgren@syntagon.se

 


Karol Hovarth, Director Crystallization services

Karol specializes in crystallization of substances with special emphasis on preparation of different salts and polymorphology studies. Over the past decade he has solved more than 200 crystallization problems and invented several techniques. Karol has been working with Syntagon since 1999. Prior to that Karol gained 11 years experience at AstraZeneca.  He holds many patents on crystallization and has over 20 years experience in crystallization and salt screening. 

karol.hovarth@syntagon.se

 
 

Ulrika Burén, QA

In January 2002, Ulrika joined Syntagon as Senior Analytical Chemist. Ulrika finalized her Master thesis in 1994 and joined AstraZeneca as an analytical chemist thereafter. She brings over 10 years of experience in the field of development and validation of analytical methods for clinical candidates, commercial APIs and final products.

ulrika.buren@syntagon.se