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 Oxford based Founder operating in the Life Science space. If you think a Founder 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.
Sebastian Brunemeier
Founder & COO of Samsara Therapeutics
Sebastian Brunemeier is the Founder and COO of Samsara Therapeutics.
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About Cyclone Therapeutics, Samsara Therapeutics, U.S. Department of State, University of Oxford: Samsara Therapeutics is a biopharmaceutical company that aims to discover therapeutics to treat rare genetic and neurodegenerative disease.
Connor Campbell
Founder and CEO of Osler Diagnostics
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About Osler Diagnostics: Lab-quality diagnostics for anyone, anywhere, at any time.
Paulo R. Bueno
Co-Founder of Osler Diagnostics
Paulo R. Bueno is the coordinator of the Nanobionics research group (www.nanobionics.pro.br) at São Paulo State University, UNESP. He published over 180 papers related to fundaments and applications of electric and electrochemistry time-dependent (including gravimetric and optical impedance) spectroscopic methods (h index 42, > 6500 citations with an average citation of higher than 25 per article, Google Scholar). His main scientific interest is focused on the fundaments and technological applications associated with electron charge transfer, transport and storage occurring at molecular and nanoscale structures. Under his guidance Nanobionics group develops synthetic structures and surfaces that mimic molecular and biological structures aiming applications in highly-relevant diagnostic devices. The Nanobionics group developed a totally new label-free diagnostic assay based on an electroanalytical spectroscopic methodology supported on the use of the electrochemistry capacitance, i.e. a capacitance proportional to the electrochemical density of states that intrinsically exists in mesoscopic structures comprised of redox-active molecules when attached over an electrode. These impedance-derived assays are able to detect target protein at femtomolar levels allowing the early detection of clinically relevant targets that are better than those currently commercial. They are potentially cheap and can be multiplexed. Other relevant aspects of his groups’ activities are the synthesis of self-assembled redox-tagged peptides and its applications in redox capacitive biosensors. The advantages of constructing a peptide-based receptive surface containing electrochemical tags are that peptides can be easily manipulated and optimized for applications containing complex biological environments. This tailoring ability avoids fouling and concomitantly can substitute antibodies by peptide or DNA aptamers as receptors with equivalent or superior affinity as well as specificity. Since 2008 Professor Bueno is engaged with tech transfer initiatives involving public-private start-up tech transfer projects with Scientific and Technological Parks in Sao Paulo. Because of such initiatives, Professor Bueno was invited to a plenary conference in the USA – Washington in 2009 by the US National Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer in which Brazilian Tech Transfer context was introduced and discussed with the US and European Tech Transfer related agents and agencies. He is also engaged with UNESP internationalization program. Finally, he acted as academic and researcher visitor several times in European universities such as Universities of Valence and Jaume I (Spain), University of Paris (France) and University of Oxford. His collaborative work has been the subject of two significant awards from The Royal Society in the UK (a Brian Mercer Award in 2013 and a Newton Fellowship in 2015). His is currently administrating a Fellowship of Royal Society (Research Fellows Director, https://royalsociety.org/people/paulo-roberto-bueno-12682/). He is Fellows of Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) in the UK and member of American Chemical Society (ACS) in the USA. Also, he is a member of The Electrochemical Society (ECS) and International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE). Professor Bueno is the co-founder of Osler Diagnostics (http://oslerdiagnostics.com/), a start-up company from the University of Oxford.
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About Osler Diagnostics: Lab-quality diagnostics for anyone, anywhere, at any time.
George Busby
CSO and Co-Founder of Allelica
George is a geneticist and a writer. He has been a researcher at the University of Oxford for more than 5 years and his scientific work has been published in Nature and Science. He was always fascinated by the possibility of using the information contained in our DNA to reconstruct the evolutionary history of human beings. He now leads the Allelica scientific team, bringing the predictive genomic accuracy of the Polygenic approach to the market for the first time.
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About Allelica: Allelica is a genomics software company driving the transition of Polygenic Risk Score from Genomic research to clinical application.
Martin-Immanuel Bittner
Co-Founder & CEO of Arctoris
Martin-Immanuel Bittner MD DPhil is a clinician-scientist and life sciences entrepreneur. He is a Rhodes scholar, an active member of several leading cancer research organisations, and an elected member of the Young Academy of the German National Academy of Sciences. Martin is a Co-Founder & CEO of Arctoris, the world’s first fully automated drug discovery platform.
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About Arctoris: Arctoris is a tech-enabled platform company in biotechnology, combining robotics & data science to accelerate drug discovery.
Thomas Fleming
Co-Founder & COO of Arctoris
Thomas Fleming is an award-winning chemist, cancer researcher, and SME Leader of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Tom is the Co-Founder & COO at Arctoris.
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About Arctoris: Arctoris is a tech-enabled platform company in biotechnology, combining robotics & data science to accelerate drug discovery.
Chris Spencer
Co-Founder and Head of Innovation of Genomics
Chris Spencer is Founder of Genomics PLC and serves as its Director. Chris Spencer’s collect, curate, analyse and interpret very large amounts of genetic data to help understand human diseases. His career has happily coincided with an era of collaboration it made major inroads into understanding of human genetics. He has played a lead analytical role in the International HapMap project and the Wellcome Trust Cases Controls Consortium. As a young scientist, his early work in large scale human data was awarded the Corcoran Memorial Prize from the Department of Statistics at the University of Oxford, which is awarded every two years for outstanding graduate work. His works are Cell-Mediated Immune Mechanisms, Visceral Leishmaniasis and Large Vessel Ischemic Stroke.
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About Genomics: Genomics plc aiming to lead the genomic transformation of healthcare.
Gil McVean
Co Founder & Director of Genomics
Gil McVean is Professor of Statistical Genetics at the University of Oxford and Head of Bioinformatics and Statistical Genetics at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics. After an undergraduate training in Zoology, he obtained a PhD with Laurence Hurst in Cambridge and worked with Brian and Deborah Charlesworth in Edinburgh before joining Oxford in 2000. His research focuses on understanding the molecular and evolutionary processes that shape genetic variation in populations and the relationship between genetic variation and phenotype. He has made contributions to our understanding of areas including recombination hotspots, historical patterns of natural selection, the male mutation rate, human genetic variation, the role of HLA in complex disease and genealogical processes. He has played a leading role in the HapMap and 1000 Genomes Projects and currently works on organisms from HIV to malaria.
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About Genomics: Genomics plc aiming to lead the genomic transformation of healthcare.
Mark Larkin
CEO and Founder of Vitaccess
Mark Larkin founded Vitaccess in 2017, after more than 15 years in consultancy, with the aims of harnessing the power of digital technology to better represent the voice of patients in drug development and market access. Mark has a BA, MA and PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK.
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About Vitaccess: Digital healthcare company providing biopharma clients with real-time insights into patients’ lives via innovative global studies
Simon Draper
Co-Founder of SpyBiotech
Simon Draper is the Co-Founder of SpyBiotech.
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About SpyBiotech: SpyBiotech Operators of a biotechnology platform intended to generate next-generation vaccines.
Mark Howarth
Co-Founder of SpyBiotech
Mark Howarth is the Co-Founder of SpyBiotech.
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About SpyBiotech: SpyBiotech Operators of a biotechnology platform intended to generate next-generation vaccines.
Philipp Kukura
Founder and Director of Refeyn
Philipp Kukura is the Founder and Director at Refeyn.
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About Refeyn: Refeyn is specialising in label-free single molecule imaging and mass measurement.
Idlir Liko
Co-Founder & CTO of OMass Technologies
Idlir Liko is currently the founder and Technology Director of OMass Therapeutics. He received a Master’s Degree from ETH Zurich in 2012 and DPhil from the University of Oxford in 2015, supervised by Prof. Dame Carol Robinson where he focused on the effect ligands and PTMs have on structure and stability of membrane proteins. His work was been featured in many high-impact publications. He has a wealth of experience in structural MS working in close collaboration with biotech and pharmaceutical companies. In 2016, he co-founded the company and has played a key role in transferring our technology from academia to industry.
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About OMass Technologies: OMass Technologies is a drug discovery company exploiting novel mass spectrometry platforms to develop therapeutics.
Paul Townsend
Founder of Karus Therapeutics
Paul Townsend is Founder at Karus Therapeutics.
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About Aptamer Group, Deep Med IO, Karus Therapeutics, Manchester Cancer Research Centre, University of Surrey: Karus is a pharmaceutical company focused on the design and development of molecular-targeted, small molecule drugs to treat cancer.
