Sylvain has more than 20 years of experience as an executive director and board member, entrepreneur, R&D director and advisor in the biotech/pharma sector. As CEO, he successfully built Augustine Therapeutics since 2020 from an academic spin-off company to a clinical-ready biotech with a robust preclinical portfolio, and recently closed a €18M Series A1 financing round from European and US-based investors.

Prior to joining Augustine, Sylvain started his career in the life-science industry in 2002 after a postodoctoral fellowship at Oxford University in the laboratory of Professor Sir Jack Baldwin. He led multiple research project at UCB Pharma (Belgium) which ultimately led to the discovery of Phase 1 clinical candidate UCB2892, a Histamine H3 antagonist for the treatment of cognitive disorders. In 2007, he joined Addex Therapeutics (Switzerland) with growing management positons within the CNS Department, leading internal preclinical projects of allosteric modulators and external collaboration with Merck&Co (US) of novel mGluR4 PAM for Parkinson's disease. In 2015, he co-founded Pragma Therapeutics (France), a biotech company focusing on the development of novel therapeutics for the treatment of neuropsychiatric and otic disorders, winner of the UK OBN Bioseed™ "One-to-Watch" award in 2018.  

Sylvain holds a PhD in Organic and Heterocyclic Chemistry from the University of Rouen (France). He is co-inventor of 30+ patent applications, co-author of 4 book chapters, 4 review articles, and 15 full peer-review articles.