Domenico (Dinko) Valerio

Vice-Chairman

  General Partner Aescap Venture Management BV

Dinko Valerio is a scientist and entrepreneur who founded the biotechnology company Crucell N.V. He was CEO of the company from the start in 1993 until 2004. In March 2011 Johnson and Johnson acquired Crucell for an aggregate value of € 2.2 Billion.
In 1999 Dinko co-founded Galapagos Genomics N.V. as a joint Venture between Crucell and Tibotec/Virco.
In 2005 Dinko co-founded Aescap Venture Management together with Michiel de Haan, the founder and previous Managing Partner of Atlas Venture. Aescap Venture Fund I manages € 103 million and is dedicated to investments in European Biomedical Companies.
Dinko’s career started in Academia. He completed his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics with Honors at Leiden University, The Netherlands in 1986. He was a ‘visiting scientific specialist’ at Genentech Inc., San Francisco, USA and a post-doctoral fellow at the Salk Institute, San Diego, USA from 1986 to 1987. In 1992 he was appointed Professor in Gene Therapy at Leiden University.
Dinko published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed Journals and is an inventor on 11 patent-families.