Silvio
Traversa

Silvio Traversa is a chemist by training. He received his PhD in Protein Chemistry from the University of Turin in 1999. He then joined Serono, at the time the biggest European biotech firm, where he spent 6 years ending up as the Head of Protein Analysis and Peptide Synthesis Laboratory. He was then hired by a freshly founded Italian start-up called Creabilis, where he worked for 10 years, most of which were spent in the position of Chief Scientific Officer (CSO). The company was then acquired by an American biotech called Sienna, where Traversa served as the CSO for 3 years. In this position, in 2017 he fully participated in the Initial Public Offering (IPO) core team, leading to the quotation of Sienna at Nasdaq. In 2020, Traversa held Adjunct Professor positions at the University of Turin and the University of Eastern Piedmont. He is currently working at creating his own start-up biotech company. Even though Traversa has been operating in several pharma biotech fields, including the development of recombinant therapeutic proteins, two have been his major interests. On the molecular side, he is the inventor of the Topical-by-DesignTM technology, that involves the conjugation of polymers to small molecules in order to completely modify their PK/PD profile. More on the medical side, he has progressively concentrated his efforts in the dermatology field. Traversa has 12 between published patents and patent applications and is in the author list of 10 scientific papers.