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 Oxfordshire based CEO’ operating in the Health Care 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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Mayank Banerjee
Co-Founder and CEO of Even
Mayank Banerjee joined Even Healthcare as Co-Founder in 2020.
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About Even: Even is a health-tech company and healthcare provider that partners directly with the top hospitals in the country.
Connor Campbell
Founder and CEO of Osler Diagnostics
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About Osler Diagnostics: Lab-quality diagnostics for anyone, anywhere, at any time.
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.
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.
Soren Krogsgaard Thomsen
Co-Founder, CEO and Managing Director of BioMe Oxford
Soren is a medical scientist at the University of Oxford, with a background in the natural sciences and genetics research. He previously worked as a consultant for pharma and OBR consulting, and has published on his experiences as an academic entrepreneur. Soren’s current research is focused on translating large-scale genetic data into mechanisms for disease to inform new therapeutic strategies. He dreams of one day enabling similar population-wide microbiome studies using the platform technology under development at BioMe Oxford Ltd.
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About BioMe Oxford, Vertex Pharmaceuticals: Unlocking your gut microbiome by developing a medical device for targeted and non-invasive sampling
Harry lamble
CEO of Sense Biodetection
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About Sense Biodetection: Sense Biodetection Limited is a molecular diagnostics company .
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.
Mike Karim
CEO and Co-founder of Oxford Endovascular
Over 20 years of international experience in medical devices including endovascular products. Leadership roles in general management, sales & marketing and mentoring. Success in fund raising, driving business growth in large corporations, SMEs and start ups, developing and bringing new products to market.
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About Oxford Endovascular: Oxford Endovascular are developing a novel treatment for treating brain aneurysms.
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.
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
Nick La Thangue
Chief Executive Officer of Argonaut Therapeutics
Nick has extensive experience of cancer drug development and has founded several companies, including Prolifix and Celleron Therapeutics and more recently Oxford Cancer Biomarkers. He has extensive commercial experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO), A Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a Fellow of the Lister Institute and Professorial Fellow at Linacre College Oxford. Nick is Chair of Cancer Biology at the University of Oxford.
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About Argonaut Therapeutics, Celleron Therapeutics: Argonaut Therapeutics is a precision therapeutics company that was established to develop epigenetically-acting drugs which target abnormal.
Ross Upton
CEO of Ultromics
Ross is specialised in utilising computational technologies to build diagnostic algorithms within cardiovascular imaging. Ross has a strong academic background within the medical sciences and has undertaken two MSc degrees and a DPhil, receiving multiple grants for technology innovation and being selected as finalist for the 2015 Young Investigator Award in Lisbon. Together with Professor Leeson, Ross founded Ultromics’ underlying technology and as CEO, he drives all aspects of the company from technology development to business strategy.
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About Ultromics: Ultromics clinicians and engineers working together to set new standards for world-class cardiovascular diagnostic tools.
Samantha Decombel
Co-Founder & CEO of FitnessGenes
A co-founder of FitnessGenes, with a PhD in genetics and a passion for science communication, Sam is responsible for product development and management of the science team. Fascinated by genetics from an early age, she studied the subject for her PhD at the University of Birmingham, UK, where she has also lectured on Evolutionary and Conservation Genetics. Sam is an enthusiastic sportswoman, and particularly enjoys playing football and running when she is not in the gym trying to improve on her squat PB of 165lb.
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About FitnessGenes, InnovationXchange, Play DNA: FitnessGenes is pioneering the field of genetic data analysis to produce personalized fitness and diet recommendations.
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
Tristan Collins
CEO of GaitQ
Tristan Collins serves as the Chief Executive Officer at GaitQ.
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About GaitQ: GaitQ is a developer of a medical device used to help people living with Parkinson’s disease to overcome freezing of gait.
Rajarshi Banerjee
Chief Executive Officer & Founder of Perspectum
Rajarshi Banerjee is CEO of Perspectum, which he co-founded in 2012, and now employs over 100 people in Oxford, Singapore and San Francisco. Rajarshi has worked in the National Health Service since 2002, and trained in cardiology and internal medicine in London and Oxford. He developed the MR techniques for rapid non-invasive liver assessment in Oxford, and commercialized the method as LiverMultiScan, which is now FDA cleared and used in over 200 sites. He graduated in medicine from Oxford, and went on to complete a Masters in Public Health in London before returning to Oxford for his doctorate. Dr Banerjee continues to work as a Consultant Physician with Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, with research into the phenotyping of liver disease at an individual and population level in adults and children. He has many years of experience in running clinical trials and working in multidisciplinary scientific teams to develop applications for cutting-edge imaging technology and is a keen advocate of smart trial design.
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About Perspectum: Healthcare, Medical Technology, SaaS
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.
Vaclav Potesil
CEO of Optellum
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About Optellum: Optellum develops an imaging biomarker for smart lung cancer detection.
Roger Noble
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Zegami
Roger Noble is a Software Developer and Data Visualisation expert with a passion for building new and innovative technologies that help people see the world in a new way.
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About Zegami: Delivering explainable AI faster and more accurately. Zegami are end-to-end imaging AI specialists combining unique tools and ML services
