Meet Mads Kjølby

Mads is co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Vesper Bio, where he helps lead the clinical development of oral therapies for neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases. A researcher and clinician with expertise in frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease, he was part of the team that identified the Vps10p-domain receptor sortilin and its interaction with progranulin – biology that now underpins Vesper’s lead program.

At Vesper, Mads has helped translate sortilin biology into a focused development strategy for VES001, an oral small molecule designed to cross the blood-brain barrier and rebalance progranulin levels in frontotemporal dementia. In 2025, the company reported positive topline results from the Phase 1b/IIa SORT-IN-2 study in asymptomatic GRN mutation carriers, supporting further development in a disease area with no approved disease-modifying treatments.

“My younger self would probably be surprised by the entrepreneurial and company-building aspects of my career. I was originally driven by curiosity about biology and disease mechanisms, and I could not have predicted all the turns that would lead from academic and clinical research into biotech leadership. But the underlying motivation has remained very consistent: to understand serious diseases well enough to change their course.”