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 CEO’ operating in the Biotechnology space. If you think a CEO’ 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.
Emma Sceats
CEO of Isogenica
Dr Sceats joined CN Bio Innovations in 2010 as Commercial Manager to spearhead the organisation’s sales, marketing and business development activities. She has led sales and partnering initiatives with major pharmaceutical organisations and overseen academic research and licensing programs, including with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that have led to the development of the company’s leading products. Dr Sceats was promoted to Chief Operating Officer in May 2013 with responsibility for the day-to-day running of the company, focussing on delivering the objectives of company investors. Dr Sceats holds degrees from Oxford and Bristol Universities (UK) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she studied Chemistry. Her previous roles include working as a research scientist at E.I. DuPont de Nemours (Wilmington, DE, USA) and in intellectual property management and licensing for the University of Oxford.
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About Isogenica: Isogenica operates a range of discovery platforms supported by state-of-the-art methodologies for identifying antibody and peptide ligands.
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Gordon Sanghera
Chief Executive Officer, Co – founder of Oxford Nanopore Technologies
Gordon Sanghera was co-founder of Oxford Nanopore, together with Hagan Bayley and IP Group. He was appointed CEO in June 2005 having acted as a consultant since February 2005 whilst the Company was established. He brings over 15 years experience in the design, development and global launch of novel point-of-care biosensor devices. At Abbott Laboratories, Dr Sanghera held both UK and US Director level positions, including Research Director and Manufacturing Process Development Director. Before its acquisition by Abbott, Gordon led the R&D of Medisense Inc. where he was instrumental in the launch of several generations of blood glucose biosensor systems for the consumer and medical markets. He has also developed and validated market production processes to meet with the regulatory requirements for USA and Europe. Gordon has a DPhil in biosensor technology and a degree in Chemistry.
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About Oxford Nanopore Technologies: Oxford Nanopore Technologies develops nanopore-based electronic systems for analyzing single molecules, including DNA, RNA, and proteins.
Bo Jing
CEO of ONI
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About ONI: ONI is a pioneer of super-resolution microscopy, making this advanced technology accessible to new generations of researchers.
James Noble
Founder & CEO of Adaptimmune
James Noble has served as our full-time Chief Executive Officer since March 2014 and part-time CEO from July 2008 to March 2014 and is one of our co-founders. From July 2008 until March 2014, Mr. Noble was also part-time CEO of Immunocore. Mr. Noble has 24 years of experience in the biotech industry. He has held numerous non-executive director positions, including at CuraGen Corporation, PowderJect Pharmaceuticals plc, Oxford GlycoSciences plc, MediGene AG, and Advanced Medical Solutions plc. Mr. Noble is also Deputy Chairman of GW Pharmaceuticals plc and a non-executive director of Immunocore Limited. Mr. Noble is qualified as a chartered accountant with Pricewaterhouse Coopers and spent seven years at the investment bank Kleinwort Benson Limited, where he became a director in 1990. He then joined British Biotech plc as Chief Financial Officer from 1990 to 1997. Mr. Noble was previously Chief Executive Officer of Avidex Limited, a privately held biotechnology company that was our predecessor, from 2000 to 2006. Mr. Noble holds an MA from the University of Oxford.
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About Adaptimmune, Advanced Medical Solutions, Curagen Corporation, MediGene, Oxford GlycoSciences, PowderJect Pharmaceuticals: Adaptimmune develops T cell therapies to treat cancer, human immunodeficiency virus, and infectious diseases.
Tony de Fougerolles
Chief Executive Officer of Evox Therapeutics
Tony has been CEO of Evox Therapeutics since late 2017. He has 25 years of biotech R&D experience and has played a key role in developing and advancing three new drug modalities towards the market (mRNA, RNAi, Nanobodies). Previously, Tony was CSO of Ablynx, where he led the company’s non-clinical R&D operations and helped bring the 1st Nanobody drug, caplacizumab, to approval. Prior to Ablynx, Tony was the founding CSO at Moderna and pioneered modified mRNA as a new therapeutic modality for both rare diseases and as vaccines, including being the inventor of the mRNA chemistry and the foundational LNP formulations used in both the approved Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech covid-19 vaccines. Prior to Moderna, Tony was among the first 6 employees at Alnylam and as VP Research helped develop RNAi as a new therapeutic modality, including overseeing the development of the now 1st approved LNP RNAi delivery system, and contributing to the development of several now approved RNAi drugs to treat life-threatening diseases. Tony has raised over $150m in equity financing, been the author on over $80m in grants, has over 60 scientific publications, and is an inventor on over 100 issued U.S. patents. He also serves on the Board of Walking Fish Therapeutics, is an advisor to and investor in multiple biotech companies, and is a Venture Partner at Ascension, a London-based venture capital firm. Lastly, he also volunteers his time with several non-profit organisations and charities. He earned his PhD in Immunology from Harvard University.
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About Evox Therapeutics: Evox Therapeutics is a biotechnology company that harnesses and engineer the natural trafficking capabilities of extracellular vesicles.
Michalis Papadakis
CEO & Co-Founder of Brainomix
Dr Michalis Papadakis is the CEO and co-founder of Brainomix. He leads the management team, commercial strategy, fund raising, and corporate partnerships. He has grown the company from the ground up, building the company’s global presence and has raised over £15 million of private investment and public funding. When he founded Brainomix he was the Scientific Director of the preclinical stroke lab at the University of Oxford. He has a BSc Honours in Biochemistry from Imperial College London and a PhD in neurosciences from UCL School of Pharmacy. He has been an invited speaker at international scientific and innovation conferences
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About Brainomix: Brainomix specializes in the creation of AI-powered imaging biomarkers that enable precision medicine for better treatment decisions
Ian Nicholson
Chief Executive Officer of F2G
Ian joined Advent in 2012 from Chroma Therapeutics Limited, a privately held oncology-focussed R&D company, where he served as Chief Executive Officer for eight years. Prior to joining Chroma, Ian was Senior Vice President, Business Development at Celltech Group plc, then the UK’s largest biotechnology company. He has extensive experience in licensing, mergers and acquisitions, and market development in the UK, Europe and the US. Ian has held a variety of senior commercial positions with Oxford Asymmetry International plc, Lonza AG and Amersham International plc and currently sits on the Boards of Consort Medical plc, Clinigen Group plc and is Non-Executive Chairman of Bioventix plc. Ian holds a B.Sc. (Hons.) degree from University College London and an MBA from Boston University. Ian is CEO of F2G Ltd and an advisor to NeRRe Therapeutics.
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About Advent Life Sciences, Amersham International, F2G: F2G discovers and develops novel drugs for the treatment of life-threatening fungal diseases.
John Beadle
Chief Executive Officer of Psioxus Therapeutics
Dr John Beadle was Entrepreneur in Residence at Imperial College London, where he helped to establish Myotec Therapeutics as a spin-out business. He became CEO of Myotec in late 2008, rapidly securing seed financing followed by a £5.6 million series A funding round from Imperial Innovations and Invesco Perpetual in early 2010. During this time, John was also Executive Chairman and CEO of Hybrid Biosystems, securing further seed financing for this Oxford based start-up. In 2010, John’s leadership of these two private companies led to their combination to form PsiOxus Therapeutics Ltd. John was previously the co-founder of the vaccine company PowderMed. In 2004 he helped to raise £20 million from leading UK and US Venture Capital Funds and was then Chief Medical Officer and board director leading to the trade sale of PowderMed to Pfizer for over US$300 million in 2006. John has previously held roles at PowderJect, Pfizer and Glaxo SmithKline where he was most recently VP of Global Medical Operations. John was trained in Medicine at the University of Witwatersrand and received his MBA with distinction from the London Business School.
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About PowderMed, Psioxus Therapeutics: Psioxus Therapeutics is a cancer gene therapy company delivers medicines of value to patients with cancer.
Andrew Hopkins
Co-Founder and CEO of Exscientia
Andrew spent 10 years at Pfizer, where he was responsible for establishing new research foci including the concepts of druggability and network pharmacology. Andrew has raised a total of $50 million for academic and commercial research activities in his continuing role as Chair of Medicinal Informatics at the University of Dundee. He is the author of some of the most highly cited papers in modern drug discovery.
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About Exscientia, Kinetic Discovery Ltd.: Exscientia is a pharmatech company that uses an end-to-end AI platform to design and discover new drugs.
Dr. Danuta Jeziorska
CEO & Co-Founder of Nucleome Therapeutics
Danuta Jeziorska is the CEO & Co-Founder at Nucleome Therapeutics.
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About Nucleome Therapeutics: Nucleome Therapeutics is decoding the dark matter of the human genome to uncover novel ways to treat diseases
Dr. Danuta Jeziorska
CEO & Co-Founder of Nucleome Therapeutics
Danuta Jeziorska is the CEO & Co-Founder at Nucleome Therapeutics.
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About Nucleome Therapeutics: Nucleome Therapeutics is decoding the dark matter of the human genome to uncover novel ways to treat diseases
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.
Colin Story
Co-Founder & CEO of OxSonics Therapeutics
Colin Story brings over 20 years of medical technology and life sciences industrial experience, the majority held in commercial roles. After graduating with a BSc degree in Biological Sciences and a PhD in Molecular Biology he started his career at Amersham plc (now GE Healthcare) in 1997. Initially he held Product Development and Project Management roles in R&D and then latterly held a commercial role where he managed a £20m product portfolio. In 2005 he joined Isis Innovation Ltd, where he initiated, led and concluded a range of multi-£m transactions. In 2008 he went on to recruit and direct a Business Development team that managed over 200 medical science innovations emanating from Oxford University. In 2011 he joined OrganOx Ltd as Operations Director where he handled all operational and contractual aspects of the business that saw the company take a class III medical device from prototype into, and successfully through, first in man clinical trials. In January 2014 he became Co-Founder, Executive Director and the Chief Executive Officer of OxSonics® Ltd.
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About OrthoSon, OxSonics Therapeutics: OxSonics® Therapeutics’ proprietary drug delivery platform technology, SonoTran®
Peter Donnelly
Chief Executive Officer of Genomics
Peter Donnelly is Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics and Professor of Statistical Science at the University of Oxford, and a founder and director of Genomics plc, a fast-growing company in the genome analytics space. He has played a leading role in many of the major projects and developments at the interface between genetics, healthcare, and clinical medicine, including the HapMap project, the Wellcome Trust Case Control consortia, and WGS500, one of the studies pioneering whole genome sequencing in clinical medicine.
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About Genomics, University of Oxford: Genomics plc aiming to lead the genomic transformation of healthcare.
Eliot Forster
CEO of F-star Therapeutics
Eliot Forster is Chief Executive Officer at F-star Therapeutics.
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About F-star Therapeutics: F-star is developing a pipeline of novel bispecific antibodies with a therapeutic focus in immuno-oncology and oncology.
Nick Skaer
Founder and CEO of Orthox Ltd.
Nick Skaer has over 20 years experience in life science and materials research, and 10 years as a medtech CEO raising over £10m to fund development of FibroFix™ technology. In 2008 he founded Orthox with Prof. Oliver Kessler, securing a Translation Award from Wellcome Trust. Since then he has led the scientific and commercial programmes at Orthox, with further awards from the Technology Strategy Board, Wellcome Trust, and NIHR. Before this he was CSO, then CEO of Oxford Biomaterials from 2004 to 2009 where he developed the FibroFix™ technology and implemented the medical device programme. During this period he co-authored 5 patents, including the three assigned to Orthox, secured over £2 million in public grants and private investment and formed 3 spin out companies from Oxford Biomaterials to commercialise biomaterial technologies. Between 1992 and 2003 he studied Molecular Biology at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Strasbourg France, where he obtained his PhD.
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About Orthox Ltd.: Orthox develops tissue regenerative implants that address large injuries to cartilage tissues in which early osteoarthritis may be present.
Ann Kramer
CEO of The Electrospinning Company
Ann Kramer is CEO of The Electrospinning Company: a biomaterial platform company with applications in regenerative medicine and medical device markets.
Ann graduated from the University of Cambridge with a degree in Natural Sciences and joined ICI Agrochemicals. Over almost 20 years with ICI, Zeneca and Syngenta she gained experience across the business including in research, sales, business development and M&A, with roles in the UK, USA and Switzerland. She managed the development of genetically modified food business streams in fresh produce crops. Since 2006 she has worked in the SME sector in the UK as Head of Business development for Oxitec Ltd. (acquired by Intrexon in 2015), COO of Immunocore Ltd. and CEO of Biosyntha Ltd. She joined The Electrospinning Company as CEO in 2012.
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About The Electrospinning Company: The Electrospinning Company is a provider of electrospun nanofibre innovations, developing solutions to industrial challenges.
Marcelo Bravo
Co Founder & Chief Executive Officer of OxVax
Marcelo Bravo is the Executive Chairman & Founder of Oxford Phamascience Group & he attended University of Oxford in 2017.
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About Oxford Phamascience Group, OxVax: OxVax focused on the development of an advanced next-generation dendritic cell vaccine platform for the treatment of solid tumor cancers.
Sumi Biswas
Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Scientific Officer of SpyBiotech
Sumi Biswas is the Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Scientific Officer of Spybiotech.
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About SpyBiotech: SpyBiotech Operators of a biotechnology platform intended to generate next-generation vaccines.
Charlotte Casebourne
CEO of Theolytics
Charlotte believes in equitable access to effective therapies. In addition to her role with Theolytics, she is a Board Member of the UK BioIndustry Association. She has also been recently named one of In Vivo‘s 30 Rising Leaders in Life Sciences.
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About Theolytics: Theolytics is a pre-clinical stage biotechnology company developing next-generation oncolytic viral therapies.
Steve Gardner
CEO and Co-founder of Precisionlife
Steve is a serial technology entrepreneur with over 25 years’ experience developing and commercializing ground-breaking data science and informatics in the healthcare, life sciences and agri-food sectors.
Never afraid to innovate, Steve has an established track record in building world-class companies, teams and products working at senior levels in the UK, EU and US for Fortune 500 and start-up companies.
He is a former Global Director of Research Informatics for Astra A/B and has consulted with drug discovery and safety teams in over 20 biopharma companies.
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About Precisionlife, RowAnalytics Ltd: We focus on patients to reveal the complex personal biology of chronic diseases
Jonathan Allis
Co-Founder & CEO of Blue Earth Diagnostics
Jonathan Allis is the founding CEO of Blue Earth Diagnostics. Prior to this role, Jonathan was the General Manager for PET at GE Healthcare Life Sciences, and had global responsibility for GE Healthcare’s PET agent and PET synthesis platforms business. He has previously held positions in R&D, Marketing and Product Development at GE Healthcare, Amersham plc., Siemens Medical Solutions and Oxford Magnet Technology, in the UK, USA and Germany. Jonathan has an undergraduate degree in Physics from the University of Cape Town and a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Oxford.
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About Blue Earth Diagnostics: BlueEarth Diagnostics mission is to transform the clinical management of recurrent prostate cancer
David Hughes
CEO of CN Bio Innovations
Dr Hughes joined CN Bio Innovations in 2010 as Head of Engineering, was promoted to Technical Director in 2013 with responsibility for the management of all in-house and collaborative research and development programmes and the contract research services business. Dr Hughes was subsequently promoted to Chief Technology Officer in July 2014 with responsibility for managing the technical programs with the company’s academic and industrial partners. and, in 2018, he was promoted to CEO. During his career at CN Bio, he has secured and overseen the successful delivery of government and pharmaceutical research contracts and research grants totalling more than £2Mi.
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About CN Bio Innovations: CN Bio develops human organ-on-a-chip platforms for the testing and development of therapeutics for serious human diseases.
David Hughes
CEO of CN Bio Innovations
Dr Hughes joined CN Bio Innovations in 2010 as Head of Engineering, was promoted to Technical Director in 2013 with responsibility for the management of all in-house and collaborative research and development programmes and the contract research services business. Dr Hughes was subsequently promoted to Chief Technology Officer in July 2014 with responsibility for managing the technical programs with the company’s academic and industrial partners. and, in 2018, he was promoted to CEO. During his career at CN Bio, he has secured and overseen the successful delivery of government and pharmaceutical research contracts and research grants totalling more than £2Mi.
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About CN Bio Innovations: CN Bio develops human organ-on-a-chip platforms for the testing and development of therapeutics for serious human diseases.
