Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top London based Vice President operating in the Biotechnology space. If you think a Vice President is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Jeanne Bolger
Vice President Venture Investing of Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation
Jeanne Bolger, MB BCh BAO, Vice President, Venture Investments, joined Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation (JJDC) in 2013. She is based in London, UK. Dr. Bolger has over 25 years of pharmaceutical industry experience in management roles across R&D, Commercial and Business Development (BD). She spent 11 years in Licensing and Acquisition (L&A), most recently as Global Head of Scientific Licensing for Johnson & Johnson’s Pharmaceutical business, having joined Johnson & Johnson in 2005 from the Business Development group at GlaxoSmithKline. In 2009, Dr. Bolger became Vice President, Alliance Management at Janssen Alzheimer Immunotherapy, working with Pfizer and Elan. Dr. Bolger received her medical degree from University College Dublin. She also holds diplomas in Child Health (NUI) and in Finance and Accounting (ACCA). She is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Ireland (RAMI). Dr. Bolger has served as the sole pharma industry representative on two Irish government taskforces seeking to enhance the commercialization of IP from Irish academic centres. She is a visiting lecturer on the MSc Pharmaceutical Medicine curriculum at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.
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About Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation, Pulmocide: Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation, a venture capital subsidiary, finances technology companies focused on patient health.
Martin Lachs
Vice President Global Project Management of ICON plc
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About ICON plc: ICON is a global provider of outsourced drug development services to biopharma, medical device, biosimilar and generic organizations.
Christopher Vann
Senior Vice President, Chief Operating Officer of Autolus
Christopher Vann leads commercial activities for Autolus. An industry veteran with 30 years’ experience in both development and business roles, he joined Autolus from Hoffmann-La Roche’s Swiss headquarters, where he was latterly responsible for leading the lung cancer commercial team and general management of the Tarceva brand. He has extensive experience of global lifecycle management of oncology products as well as implementing marketing strategy at a regional and national level. This includes launching several oncology, immunology and transplant products in countries such as China, Japan, Romania, Russia, South Africa, the UK and the USA. He gained his degree in toxicology and pharmacology from the School of Pharmacy, University of London.
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About Autolus: Autolus is in T-cell programming and manufacturing technology.
Joanna Holbrook
Senior Vice President of Research of Cambridge Epigenetix
Joanna started her career in GSK R&D, working for seven years in the UK bioinformatics department, processing the integrating ‘omic data for drug target identification and validation mostly focussing on neurological disease, and then for three years in GSK USA Oncology R&D working on biomarkers for targeted therapies. She then left GSK and the USA for Singapore and built an academic group in A*STAR Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences. Her group focused on epigenomic trackers of complex disease, especially the interaction of genetic, environmental and disease states in shaping the human epigenome. Her work in Singapore encompassed set-up of observational and interventional cohorts, biobanking, clinical databases, production, processing and analysis of biosample ‘omic profiles and multiple industrial collaborations. Moving back to the UK five years later, she took up a professorship at the University of Southampton, still working on epigenomics and also integration of electronic health record data to clinical cohorts. Most recently she has been VP of Translational Medicine at BenevolentAI, a fast growing British Biotech, where she initiated and led integration of ‘omic data into a large biomedical knowledge graph and machine learning approaches to analyses of patient-level data for precision medicine.
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About Cambridge Epigenetix: Cambridge Epigenetix is using epigenetics to reduce several routine & important diagnostic tests for common cancers to a simple blood draw.
Noor Shaker
Senior Vice President and General Manager of X-Chem
Noor was an assistant professor at Aalborg University in Copenhagen working on machine learning. She has more than 50 publications and 1100+ citations and has co-authored a book on generative methods.
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About Lynura, X-Chem: X-Chem, Inc. is a privately held biotechnology company.
