About us

Thomas has more than 25 years of experience and expertise as an entrepreneur working with companies that have a strong technological base. He is the founder of PIRCHE and was the co-founder and former CEO of the biopharmaceutical company “NOXXON Pharma” (EPA: ALNOX), also based in Berlin. In 2004, Thomas was co-founder of Arcway (Berlin), the first spin-off from the Hasso-Plattner Institute in Potsdam and served as its chairman until it was sold in 2010. Additionally, he served from 2006 to 2020 as the business development advisor and legal representative for all clinical trials in Europe of “Pluristem” (NASDAQ: PSTI), Haifa, a leading provider of cell therapy products. Thomas holds a Magister Artium (M.A.) degree from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich in History and Political Sciences.

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Chris holds the position of Executive Vice President of Transplant Services & Business Development. In this role, he is responsible for leading Pirche's transplant services business, including the development and implementation of strategies, new products, and services. Previously, he lead the strategy and the laboratory services business segment for Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Transplant Diagnostics Division as Senior Director.  Chris has 20 years of diagnostics experience, holding various leadership roles in Corporate Finance, Marketing, Scientific Affairs, and Business Development at ThermoFisher Scientific and Alere (now Abbott). Prior to joining Thermo Fisher, he helped to found ActiCare Health, where he led the development of the world’s first fully-connected, at-home monitoring system for transplant recipients. Chris completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania and his graduate work in epidemiology at Harvard University.

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Heather has held progressive leadership positions at Banner Health and Mayo Clinic, two leading academic medical centers. She most recently served as a Senior Medical Science Liaison at Thermo Fisher Scientific, where she supported evidence generation for the company’s post-transplant business, developed relationships within the transplant community that extend across the world, drove patient advocacy efforts, and provided clinical expertise to advance product development. She holds a Master of Science in Nursing from Grand Canyon University. She brings to Pirche extensive experience in clinical diagnostics, transplant medicine, and healthcare leadership.

In her current role, Heather is responsible for developing and executing Pirche's strategy for building partnerships within the clinical and transplant fields.

Cristina is a seasoned transplant and cellular therapy professional with18 years of combined clinical and industry experience spanning pediatriconcology, bone marrow transplant, solid organ transplant, and gene therapy. Shebrings a deep understanding of site engagement, and strategic implementation ofinnovative diagnostics. A former President’s Club awardee at EurofinsTransplant Genomics, Cristina successfully partnered with top transplantcenters to drive adoption, retention, and alignment with testing protocols. Herability to connect clinical insight with precision tools like PIRCHE supportsthe industry’s push toward IOTA-aligned strategies and safer, more personalizedimmunosuppression management. Cristina is passionateabout bridging compatibility with predictability—empowering transplant teams tomake data-informed decisions that honor both recipients and donors.

Jennifer Coccodrilli brings more than 15 years of genetics andtransplant account management experience to Pirche spanning cardiology,neurology, nephrology and pediatric rare disease. Jen joins PIRCHE hasRegional Transplant Account Manager covering the northern United States andCanada. Jen is a senior level account executive, having launched severalcompanies and products in the commercial space. She has served asNational Account Manager for an international RNA-seq diagnostic company, executedbiopharma business development partnerships and held several senior sales andtraining roles throughout her career.

Dr. Spierings is the inventor of the PIRCHE algorithm which allows the prediction of HLA-derived T-cell epitopes and he has been leading in the process of bringing the PIRCHE concept from prototype to production. Since 2008, he has operated as an independent principal investigator at the Center of Translational Immunology and as an EFI accredited lab director of the HLA laboratory of the University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands. In this combined position, he merges diagnostic histocompatibility testing with research and teaching. His research has a strong focus on T cells and T-cell responses in relation to organ- and stem-cell transplantation with the aim to translate new knowledge into clinical practice.

Eric is also the (co-) author of more than 90 publications in national and international scientific journals and he currently has an h-index of 29. He has been project leader of the minor H antigen projects within the 14th and 15th International HLA & Immunogenetics Workshops and is currently co-chair of the upcoming International HLA & Histocompatibility Workshop with a special focus on the definition of the immunogenic and non-immunogenic HLA epitopes.

Matthias serves as Pirche’s Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, focusing on implementing the PIRCHE web service and translating the PIRCHE algorithm from a pure research prototype to a commercial tool-suite. He supports research teams all around the globe, has co- authored multiple PIRCHE-related publications and regularly presents scientific abstracts at international conferences. Matthias holds a Masters degree in Computer Science with a major in software engineering and a minor in Bioinformatics from Berlin University (Freie Universität). While working at Charité University Hospital in Berlin, he developed a database for kidney transplantation data and worked on various laboratory information systems and research databases. His research at Charité focused on epitope matching models and machine learning in sparse clinical data sets.

During Ben’s Masters studies in Computational Biology at the University of Minnesota in the USA, he collaborated on data standards for HLA genotyping data with the bioinformatics team of the National Marrow Donor Program / BeTheMatch. In 2020, Ben completed his PhD, focused on HLA Haplotypes and long-read nanopore sequencing, in bioinformatics at Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands. Following this, he worked in Utrecht, NL within the Center for Translational Immunology on a variety of immunogenicity projects. Ben has also been responsible for data collection and bioinformatics analysis for an assortment of HLA-focused studies for the 18th International HLA and Immunogenetics Workshop. His computational focus and interest in bioinformatics and HLA immunogenicity complements the goals of PIRCHE to provide epitope-focused matching services.

Hilary is a Certified Histocompatibility Specialist with 14 years of HLA laboratory experience. Throughout the years, she gained experience in all areas of immunogenetics, eventually focusing primarily on next-generation sequencing (NGS). Hilary holds a Master’s degree in Biotechnology & Bioinformatics and a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology.

With nearly 15 years of experience in IT Andreas’ career has covered a wide range of niches in software development from business analytics & requirements engineering through architecture & implementation up to quality assurance & infrastructure management, both in the role as engineer and manager. After working as software engineer for different companies Andreas worked for the Cytolon AG developing and certifying a HLA based stem cell matching platform supporting health care professionals in treating leukaemia patients. Following that he worked at Be the Partner building a clinical trial platform taking the role as Director of Technology. Finally Andreas joined the PIRCHE team as Director of Operations, later being appointed Vice President – Operations and covering multiple aspects in running and further developing the PIRCHE web-service and technology, as well as working closely with the PIRCHE customers, partners and community.