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 United Kingdom based COO’ operating in the Pharmaceutical space. If you think a COO’ 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.
David Brindley
Chief Operating Officer of Rational Vaccines
David is an international thought-leader in healthcare risk management, with a particular interest in regenerative medicines. His multi-disciplinary research seeks to evaluate and develop systematic, rigorous and transparent risk management tools supporting the translation of life-science innovations into commercially viable products and services.
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About Rational Vaccines: Rational Vaccines is a pre-clinical stage that develops live-attenuated herpes simplex virus vaccines.
Michael Anstey
Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Proteorex Therapeutics Inc.
Michael Anstey is an Investment Director specialising in healthcare investments. Before joining CIC he was a Principal in the Healthcare Practice Area at The Boston Consulting Group’s (BCG) Toronto office. Michael has experience in advising multinational healthcare businesses across North America, Europe, India, and Japan on a broad range of topics, including corporate strategy, sales and marketing, new launches, R&D and medical strategy, and M&A. Michael was co-founder and COO of an early stage biotechnology company focused on developing small molecule drugs that target protein-protein interactions implicated in disease. Prior to BCG, Michael worked in venture capital, where he focused on investing in early stage healthcare and life science businesses. Michael earned his DPhil in Zoology in the field of neurobiology, jointly supervised by professors at the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford. Michael sits on the board of Bicycle Therapeutics.
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About Cambridge Innovation Capital, Proteorex Therapeutics Inc.: Expanding horizons to find cures
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.
Gary Dannatt
COO of Pharmacy2U
Gary Dannatt is a qualified chartered accountant with vast experience in senior financial and operational roles in a variety of sectors. He was previously Chief Operating Officer at Chemist Direct, which merged with Pharmacy2U in July 2016. Early in his career, Gary worked in ‘blue chip’ roles within the likes of Ernst & Young, Citibank and Oracle. Gary’s area of expertise is within Venture Capital backed businesses, and he has recently been a director of Simply Switch, which was sold to DMGT plc. Gary also worked alongside Mark Livingstone as COO at Scoot.
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About ChemistDirect, Pharmacy2U: Pharmacy2U are the UK’s leading NHS approved online pharmacy and also provide a confidential private online doctor service.
Mike Birch
Chief Operating Officer of F2G
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About F2G: F2G discovers and develops novel drugs for the treatment of life-threatening fungal diseases.
Samantha Vieira
Chief Operating Officer of Anjarium Biosciences
Samantha Vieira is the Chief Operating Officer at Anjarium Biosciences.
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About Anjarium Biosciences: Anjarium is focused on creating new class of non-viral gene therapies to deliver predictable ,inclusionary ways to tackle genetic diseases.
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.
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.
Sacha Carton
Co-Founder & COO of Airfinity
Sacha is co-founder & COO at Airfinity – a science information and analytics company. He is a data, tech and media entrepreneur who previously co-founded ad pepper media (FRA: APM), Adbrain (sold to NSDQ: TTD), Scala Ventures and advisory firm Ogmenta and has been an investor, advisor and director in multiple media, data, adtech, PE and M&A companies in Europe and the US.
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About Airfinity, Scala Ventures: Airfinity is a science information and analytics company
Nick Denison-Pender
COO of Prescient Healthcare Group
Nick, is COO joined Prescient in 2010. After studying engineering, he held various positions focused on business improvement, mainly in the construction industry. He has worked in many parts of the world, establishing and embedding businesses into local markets. At Prescient, he holds overall responsibility for their operations and infrastructure and has been instrumental in setting up the departments, processes and procedures required to support a growing business.
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About Prescient Healthcare Group: Prescient Healthcare Group was founded in London in 1995, originally specializing in competitive insights.
Shaun Chilton
COO of Clinigen Group
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About Clinigen Group: Clinigen is a rapidly-growing specialty pharmaceutical and services company,
Derek Lindsay
Chief Operating Officer of AMR Centre
Derek was a co-founder of Redx Pharma and its Chief Operating Officer from 2012-17. His former roles include being a Director of Innovation of pharmaceutical industry consortium Britest Ltd from 2006 to 2012, and R&D Director of Avecia Pharmaceutical Products in a management career of more than 20 years. Derek has worked in R&D, Process Development and Hazards at Avecia and its predecessor businesses, Zeneca and ICI, which he joined in 1988, after initially working in R&D at BP from 1985.
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About AMR Centre: AMR Centre is a joint private-public initiative to support/accelerate the development of new antibiotics and diagnostics.
Simon Tyler
Chief Operating Officer of CatSci
Simon obtained an MA in Natural Sciences (Chemistry) from Hertford College, Oxford in 1995 and earned a PhD in 1998 after research on asymmetric synthesis in the group of Prof. Laurence M. Harwood. Then followed a two-year post-doctoral stint with Prof. Barry M. Trost at Stanford University, studying the catalysis of the Claisen rearrangement. In 2001, Simon returned to the UK to join Process R&D in AstraZeneca, gaining experience and understanding of the multi-disciplinary needs of drug development to lead significant process development projects ranging from candidate selection to Phase III, therein establishing a record of exploiting innovative synthetic and catalytic chemistry for the manufacture of drug candidates. After ten years in big pharma, Simon played a pivotal role as a co-founder of CatSci Ltd, negotiating the financial terms for the asset transfer and service agreement with AstraZeneca. After an initial operational role during the establishment of the new start-up, he subsequently took on commercial responsibility for the company, overseeing growth to a multi-million pound business. He currently serves as Chief Operating Officer, focused on unleashing the talents of staff across the organisation to exceed the expectations of customers. As a dynamic leader, he is committed to the development of others through vision, participation and affiliation.
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About CatSci: CatSci provides innovative process research and development services to emerging, mid-sized and large pharma.
