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About

With Alipheron, there is a viable path to accelerate the discovery of safer and more effective medicines by performing hit expansion and lead optimization without compromise.

We develop and offer highly efficient virtual screening tools to access and explore ultra-large combinatorial spaces in 2D and 3D, enabling next-level hit expansion, scaffold hopping, and lead optimization.

Together with our world-class partners, well-trusted chemicals providers, we enable the efficient exploration of on-demand compound spaces ranging into the trillions.

The Team


Dr. Modest von Korff

CEO & Founder

Modest is a pharmacist by training and holds a PhD in statistics. Throughout his career in various drug discovery companies, he has developed innovative methods for virtual screening and molecular property prediction. With a strong background in pharmacy, cheminformatics, and data-driven innovation, he combines scientific depth with strategic leadership. He is committed to transforming how organizations navigate and utilize complex information.

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Dr. Thomas Sander

CTO & Founder

Thomas holds a PhD in organic chemistry and PostDoc in cheminformatics. He spent more than 20 years in leading roles in drug discovery informatics at Roche, Actelion, and Idorsia. He has co-founded multiple companies and is the main developer of widely used open-source cheminformatics projects as DataWarrior and OpenChemLib. He is the co-author of more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific publications.

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James Cunningham

COO, Chairman & Founder

After a financial career spanning four decades, James has professional experience in commercial banking, investment banking and private banking in the United States, Asia, Britain and Dubai. In Switzerland for the past 30 years, James has headed portfolio management teams in Lausanne and in Basel, most recently as Head, Institutional and Quantitative Asset Management for Bank Sarasin.

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Christian Rufener

Principal Software Engineer

Christian is a software engineer and architect with a strong background in cheminformatics. He has more than 20 years of experience in successfully designing and developing software solutions for biotech and pharmaceutical companies.

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Dr. Christian Loeffeld

Head of Marketing and Sales

Christian holds a PhD in analytical chemistry and PostDoc in computational physical chemistry. He dedicated two years to developing a scientific software venture before joining a leading MedTech as a scientific software engineer. This experience enabled a series of roles spanning product management, sales, and business development in the bioanalytical software and instrumentation industry.

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