Jan Brummund, Business Development Director at Nanoform Finland Plc
Jan Brummund, Business Development Director at Nanoform Finland Plc
Jan Brummund, Business Development Director at Nanoform Finland Plc
Biography
Jan Brummund is Business Development Director at Nanoform Finland, where he works with pharmaceutical and biotech partners to advance drug product development and to bring nanoparticle-based therapies into clinical and commercial reality. He holds a PhD in chemical engineering from Hamburg University of Technology and has a background in process development, focused on biocatalysis, with experience across R&D through to commercial project and program leadership.
Before joining Nanoform, he worked at DSM and InnoSyn in the Netherlands, where he managed cross-functional programs focused on chemical process design and gained extensive experience in translating scientific concepts into scalable and commercially viable solutions.
Over time, his role evolved towards the commercial interface, driven by a strong interest in how technologies create value in practice. He complemented his technical background with an MBA program and training in systemic coaching, further shaping his focus on interdisciplinary collaboration and the human aspects of innovation.
Today, his work centers on connecting technology, business, and patient needs to enable more effective and patient-centric drug product solutions.
Interview
NanoSphere: Tell us a bit about yourself—your background, journey, and what led you to where you are today.
Jan: I originally come from a background in chemical engineering, where I focused on biocatalytic process development during my PhD, working in interdisciplinary environments together with chemists, biologists and engineers both at the University of Technology in Hamburg and at DSM. Early on, I realized that solving complex problems is rarely just about the technology itself, but about how different perspectives come together to make something work in practice.
After moving into industry with DSM and later InnoSyn in the Netherlands, I worked across roles from process development and scale-up to project and program leadership. Over time, I became increasingly involved in managing cross-functional projects, which gave me a broader understanding of how scientific ideas need to be translated into robust and scalable solutions.
In parallel, I started to get more exposure to the commercial side of the business. A lot of that happened quite naturally, as I had the opportunity to work closely with our CEO at the time, who brought me into customer visits, discussions, and trade shows. What I found most interesting there was the human side, understanding what different stakeholders are actually trying to solve, and how technical topics translate into real decisions. This led me to complete an MBA program and eventually take on a formal business development role at InnoSyn.
Along this path, I also deepened my long-standing interest in the human side of complex projects. Through my training in systemic coaching at the University of Cologne, I became more structured and reflective in how I approach these situations, particularly when it comes to understanding different perspectives, facilitating discussions, and developing solutions together rather than simply proposing them.
Today I work as Business Development Director Europe at Nanoform Finland, a company specializing in nanoparticle engineering to enable advanced drug formulation across small molecules and biologics. In that role I work at the intersection of advanced particle technology, drug product strategy, and commercial partnerships with pharma and biotech companies across Europe. It is exactly the kind of environment where science, business, and people need to align closely to create impact, which is also what draws me to NanoSphere.
NanoSphere: With increasing pressure to reduce clinical attrition and improve drug performance, how do you see advanced particle engineering and formulation science reshaping how new medicines are developed and produced?
Jan: In conversations with pharmaceutical companies, one pattern comes up repeatedly: promising drug candidates that perform well biologically but run into hard limits at the drug product level. Increasingly, those limits are not just technical, but directly shape how patients experience their therapy.
This becomes particularly visible for biologics. While many of these therapies show strong efficacy, their clinical use is often tied to intravenous administration, long infusion times, and repeated hospital visits. Reducing this burden is therefore not just about convenience, but about improving how patients experience their treatment.
One of the fundamental challenges in enabling subcutaneous delivery of biologics is the trade-off between dose, concentration and viscosity. Traditionally, the industry has tried to address this either by pushing to very high concentrations or by enabling larger injection volumes through devices, both with clear limitations in terms of stability, injectability and patient convenience.
This is where advanced particle engineering can go beyond what traditional formulation approaches allow. By enabling higher concentration drug products with carefully controlled particle properties, it becomes possible to open the door to more patient-centric delivery routes such as subcutaneous administration. In practice, this can mean shorter administration times, fewer hospital visits, and in some cases even the possibility for self-administration at home. At the same time, these types of formulation strategies also create tangible value for pharmaceutical companies, for example by enabling differentiation, supporting lifecycle management, and extending the relevance of existing assets.
At Nanoform, for example, we are working on particle-based approaches that allow the creation of highly concentrated, non-aqueous formulations specifically designed to support these delivery strategies. The ambition is not only to overcome formulation barriers, but to rethink drug product design around the patient experience from the very beginning of development.
While much of the current focus is on biologics and route-of-administration changes, similar principles can also be applied more broadly. In small molecule development, improving the performance of poorly soluble compounds can enable more efficient formulations, reduced dosing frequency, or smaller tablet sizes. In some cases, it can even help to reduce or eliminate food effects, leading to more predictable drug exposure and greater convenience for patients.
Looking ahead, the most exciting opportunity is to embed this patient-focused thinking into formulation strategy from day one rather than as an afterthought once a molecule has already been developed. Particle engineering provides the tools to do that and will become increasingly important as the industry moves towards more complex modalities and more patient-centric drug product design.
NanoSphere: Your background combines a PhD in chemical engineering with an MBA and systemic coaching training. How has this combination shaped the way you approach collaboration between R&D, manufacuring, and commercial teams in complex pharmaceutical projects?
Jan: What I’ve seen is that the hardest challenges in drug development are not always purely technical. In many cases, the real difficulty lies in how different disciplines and functions come together around a problem, and whether the right questions are being asked at the right moment.
Even within R&D, you often have very different perspectives: From chemists, biologists, and physicists to engineers and formulation scientists. Once you add manufacturing, commercial, IP, or regulatory into the mix, the complexity increases further. Each function brings its own priorities and constraints that are not always made explicit.
One recurring challenge is that teams move quickly into solution mode without fully aligning on what problem they are actually trying to solve. That can lead to very solid technical work, but not necessarily to outcomes that hold up later in development. If key constraints and expectations are not clear early on, it becomes much harder to adjust course later.
My technical background, combined with systemic coaching training and the broader business perspective from my MBA, has influenced how I approach these situations. It is less about having the right answer myself, and more about structuring discussions so that different perspectives come together and lead to better decisions.
In practice, even small misalignments early on can compound. A formulation optimized in isolation, without sufficient consideration of manufacturing constraints, device requirements, or commercial positioning, may technically succeed but still fall short of delivering the intended outcome for patients. This is where structured, cross-functional alignment can make a real difference.
NanoSphere: If there’s one key message or insight you’d like to share with readers about the future of nanomedicine, what would it be?
Jan: The real breakthrough in nanomedicine will not just be measured in improved bioavailability or pharmacokinetics, but in how much less intrusive treatment becomes in a patient’s daily life. That is the standard we should be designing towards.
In practice, this means rethinking how drug products are designed from the very beginning, starting not from the molecule but from the patient experience. For patients managing chronic conditions, even small changes in how a therapy is administered can make a real difference, whether that means fewer hospital visits, simpler dosing regimens, or the possibility of self-administration at home.
At Nanoform, this is exactly the kind of challenge we focus on: Not only improving the technical performance of a drug product, but ensuring that this performance translates into tangible benefits for patients in their everyday treatment reality, while also creating meaningful differentiation for pharmaceutical companies.
Jan`s references
- Nanoform: https://www.nanoform.com/en/
- Nanoform case study: Subcutaneous trastuzumab enabled by particle formulation: https://www.nanoform.com/en/nanoform-subcutaneously-administered-nanotrastuzumab-matches-performance-of-herceptin-hylecta-in-minipig-study/