Manuel Corpas is a lecturer in Genomics at the University of Westminster, London, and serves as Scientific Director of Cambridge Precision Medicine, a company associated with the Cambridge University business accelerator (ideaSpace). Manuel is an expert in providing clinical genomics interpretation services to healthcare institutions. He is also a visiting tutor/lecturer at the University of Cambridge and director of the expert course in clinical genetics and personalized medicine at the International University of La Rioja.
He has more than 60 scientific publications in international journals and one book. He graduated in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Navarra, with a master’s and PhD in Bioinformatics from the University of Manchester, and 3.5 years of postdoctoral experience at the Sanger Institute, Cambridge, UK.
Professor Frangi is Diamond Jubilee Chair in Computational Medicine and Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies at the University of Leeds, Leeds, UK, with joint appointments at the School of Computing and the School of Medicine. He directs the CISTIB Center for Computational Imaging and Simulation Technologies in Biomedicine. He is Turing Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute. Prof Frangi is the Scientific Director of the Leeds Centre for HealthTech Innovation and Director of Research and Innovation of the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics.
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Sandy has a PhD in Neuropharmacology and over 25 years Pharmaceutical R&D, Strategy and Business Development experience from large pharmaceutical and micro biotech startup companies alike. She was Head of Psychopharmacology at Lundbeck, where she successfully project managed several drug candidates into the early stages of clinical development, including the antidepressant vortioxetine; the first drug to receive the labelling for cognitive enhancement in depression. Moving into BD she was involved in the partnering of Lundbeck’s depression portfolio with Takeda, and the in-licensing of a number of mid to late-stage drug candidates.
Dhavendra Kumar is highly acclaimed, globally acknowledged genetic and genomic clinician with special interests in clinical genetics and genomic medicine. He is credited with landmark contributions and achievements in genetic-inherited diseases of children, hereditary familial conditions of heart and blood vessels, applications of novel genomic principles and technology in genomic-precision medicine and public and population health genomics. He has authored/ edited around 30 books in genetics/ genomics including the founding editor in chief of 5 bio-medical journals and the series editor for the ‘Advances in Genetics’.He is honoured with Doctor of Science, Honoris Causa by the alma mater, KGMU Lucknow, Hind Rattan International NRI Award, the GAPIO-Siemens Medical Innovation Award, the Glory of Georgians & Lifetime Achievement Award of the King George’s Medical University Alumni UK, and the Life Time Achievement Award conferred by GAPIO (2023).
Caroline studied Biochemistry and Microbiology before specializing in Immunology, obtaining her PhD in Tim Tree’s group at King’s College London. During her PhD and ensuing post-doctoral role, she utilized lentiviral TCR gene transfer to develop regulatory T cell therapies for autoimmune disease and transplant rejection. Caroline then joined John Maher’s CAR mechanics group and went on to join Leucid Bio in 2018. She now leads the development of allogeneic CAR T cell therapies for solid tumours, focusing on γδ T-cells.
Amin Hajitou completed his PhD at The University of Liège, Belgium. During his PhD work he acquired extensive experience in gene delivery technologies. Then, he completed his postdoctoral training at the MD-Anderson Cancer Center in Texas-USA, where he gained expertise in bacteriophage (phage)-guided delivery of nucleic acids. Importantly, he designed a novel hybrid phage vector for targeted gene transfer and showed first success of systemic gene targeting to cancer in vivo. His team and independent groups reported efficacy of intravenous cancer gene therapy in rodents and pet dogs. Phase 1 clinical trials in cancer patients have started in 2022. In 2008, Hajitou established his research team as a Lecturer, at Imperial College London, where he became Senior Lecturer in 2013, then Reader in 2016 and Professor of Targeted Therapeutics in 2019. His research team has become a leading authority in phage-guided delivery technologies. His leadership in the field has resulted in various awards, patent applications and two start-up companies.
Dr Milena Kalaitsidou PhD is the Principal Scientist in the Pre-Clinical Safety Group at the Department of Research at Instil Bio. She attained a Masters in Immunology and Immunogenetics and PhD in Cancer Sciences from the University of Manchester. Her PhD focused on the understanding T cell responses towards leukemic fusion proteins and the potential application in cell therapy treatments. Subsequently, she led projects developing CAR chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for ovarian cancer in collaboration with Oxford Biomedica and the University of Manchester.
Her adoptive cell therapy interests were further cultivated during her fellowship between University of Manchester and GSK, whereby she worked on developing tumour infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy with or without engineering for an array of cancer types. She continued the TIL therapy development by joining Instil Bio where she has led TIL engineering projects from concept to clinical application
Dr. Arijit Mukhopadhyay is a researcher in Human Genetics & Genomics with over 23 years of research experience (17 years post PhD). Currently, he is a Reader in Human Genetics at the University of Salford, Manchester, United Kingdom. He has worked on a variety of diseases and contributed to fundamental understanding of genetic aetiology. Currently, he is interested in epi-transcriptomic changes as biomarkers for precision health. Till to date, he has published 69 peerreviewed publications and supervised 15 PhD students (h-index 28; ~2700 citations).
Dr John Maher is the scientific founder and chief scientific officer of Leucid Bio. He is also a clinical immunologist who leads the "CAR Mechanics" research group within King's College London. He played a key role in the early development of second generation (CD28) CAR technology while a visiting fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, an approach that has achieved clinical impact in haematological malignancies. His research group is focused on the development of adoptive immunotherapy using CAR engineered and gamma delta T-cells, with a primary emphasis on solid tumour types. In addition, he is a consultant immunologist within King's Health Partners and Eastbourne Hospital.
Christoph A. Merten is a Professor for biomedical microfluidics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL; www.epfl.ch/labs/lbmm) in Lausanne, Switzerland. He also holds an adjunct position at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR).
In parallel to his academic career, Christoph has gained significant industry and entrepreneurship experience: He successfully commercialized microfluidic technology for genomic applications (e.g. licensed to Diagenode for the BioRuptor OneTM), collaborated with big pharma (including Roche and GSK) and worked for many years as a consultant. Furthermore, he is the scientific founder and chief consultant of Veraxa Biotech (www.velabs-therapeutics.com), an antibody discovery company that successfully secured 2 investment rounds within just one year and which is constantly growing and acquiring deals with large pharma industry.
Christoph holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry (directed evolution) from the University of Frankfurt and did postdoctoral studies at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (Cambridge, UK) and the Institute de Science et d’Ingénierie Supramoléculaires (ISIS) in Strasbourg, France. Before moving to Switzerland he lead a group at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany
Andrew has been leading translational biology teams for nearly 20 years with international industrial experience developing both small and large molecule oncology drugs. He began his career on the faculty of the University of Kentucky before joining N of One Therapeutics, MedImmune (USA) and subsequently AstraZeneca (UK). Andrew has brought multiple therapeutic candidates into and through clinical development including immunotherapies, antibody/drug conjugates, DNA damage/repair modulators and classical cell signalling inhibitors.
Andrew has a BSci degree from the University of Toronto in Canada, and a PhD in molecular genetics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has published over 40 papers in peer-reviewed journals and serves on the Molecular and Cellular Medicine Board of the MRC (UK).
Jenny has an MA in Experimental Psychology from Oxford University, a PhD in the epidemiology of schizophrenia from the University of Cambridge and completed post-doctoral work at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. She joined Cambridge Cognition in 2008 and worked i Jenny has an MA in Experimental Psychology from Oxford University, a PhD in the epidemiology of schizophrenia from the University of Cambridge and completed post-doctoral work at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. She joined Cambridge Cognition in 2008 and worked in the clinical trial, healthcare, and R&D functions before joining the senior management team in 2014 and becoming CSO in 2016.
She has worked on the design and analysis of more than 100 cognitive trials and is the author of 60+ scientific publications and six patents. She has led IP strategy, KOL networking and the scientific validation of medical devices for regulatory approvaln the clinical trial, healthcare, and R&D functions before joining the senior management team in 2014 and becoming CSO in 2016. She has worked on the design and analysis of more than 100 cognitive trials and is the author of 60+ scientific publications and six patents. She has led IP strategy, KOL networking and the scientific validation of medical devices for regulatory approval.
Manuel Corpas is a lecturer in Genomics at the University of Westminster, London, and serves as Scientific Director of Cambridge Precision Medicine, a company associated with the Cambridge University business accelerator (ideaSpace). Manuel is an expert in providing clinical genomics interpretation services to healthcare institutions. He is also a visiting tutor/lecturer at the University of Cambridge and director of the expert course in clinical genetics and personalized medicine at the International University of La Rioja.
He has more than 60 scientific publications in international journals and one book. He graduated in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Navarra, with a master’s and PhD in Bioinformatics from the University of Manchester, and 3.5 years of postdoctoral experience at the Sanger Institute, Cambridge, UK.
Nagy is a founder and Head of R&D of MiNA Therapeutics. For over three decades Nagy has been at the forefront of clinical research and clinical practice in cancer. He pioneered the first clinical trial in the use of adenovirus and plasmid for the treatment of liver cancer, as well as the use of plasmid gene therapy in hydrodynamic gene delivery. Currently, he is driving the development of an saRNA drug (a new class of medicines) which is currently being trialed in patients with liver cancer in eight UK centres, and sites in Singapore and Taiwan (OUTREACH study, ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT02716012), a second trial in patients with solid tumours (TIMEPOINT study, ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT 04105335) in the UK, USA, Europe, Singapore and Taiwan and OUTREACH2 study, which is a randomised phase II follow-on study in patient with viral HCC (ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT 04710641). He has published widely in gene therapy, stem cell therapy, oligonucleotides, endoscopy and surgery. Previously Nagy was founder and Chairman of EMcision Limited (acquired by Boston Scientific Inc in 2018). Nagy is Lead Clinician and Head of the Department of HPB Surgery at Imperial College London
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Victoria Sanz Moreno received an EACR 40th Anniversary Research Award in 2008. In 2011 she established her lab with a CRUK Career Development Fellowship at King’s College London (Randall Centre for cell and molecular biophysics). In 2015, she was highly commended as CRUK Communications and Brand Ambassador for communicating science to the public. In 2017 she was awarded the BSCB Women in Cell Biology Early Career Award Medal. She joined Barts Cancer Institute at Queen Mary University of London as Professor of Cancer Cell Biology in 2018. In 2019, she received The Distinguished Alumnus Award from Colegio Inmaculada (Asturias) and Paper of the Year Award at Barts Cancer Institute. In 2021, she was elected by school students to be part of “Ruta de las Cientificas”- a phone App celebrating the achievements of 9 women in STEM. In 2022, she received the Estela Medrano Memorial Award from the Society for Melanoma Research and the VP Award for Research Excellence from Queen Mary’s Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry. In 2023 VSM received the Research Impact Award at Barts Cancer Institute.
Dr Williams graduated from Cardiff University in 1996 with a BSc in Genetics and later, in 2005 a PhD focusing on the genetics of schizophrenia. In 2013 he moved to UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and began working on the genomics of rare paediatric diseases where he ran the GOSgene group. In 2019 Dr Williams returned to Cardiff University to take up a post a senior lecturer in bioinformatics where his work is focused on the use of Omics techniques to better understand the genomic basis of rare diseases.
Samaneh Kouchaki is Lecturer in Machine learning for Healthcare at the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering and a member of the Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing (CVSSP) at the University of Surrey and the UK Dementia Research Institute at Imperial Collage London. Her research interests include machine learning, health informatics, biomedical signal processing and computational biology.
Cyndie Forestier joined Sengenics this January as Field Application Scientist. Following her qualifications, she started working, first as research assistant then moved to the private sector in biotech companies as technical support and gained over 13 years’ experience as field application scientist. Over the years, she has built her expertise in Genomics, Next generation Sequencing, Nucleic acid extraction, and purification, Molecular Diagnostics for the NIPT but also diagnostics tests using qPCR and NGS, Automation. At Sengenics she adapted all her knowledge to demonstrate the value of Autoantibodies as biomarkers for biomarkers discovery, patient stratification and immune response prediction empowering precision medicine.
Carole has a diverse clinical research background in infectious disease immunobiology and public health in lowerincome countries. She holds a PhD in translational immunology during which she used CyTOF and spectral flow cytometry to uncover novel immune biomarkers of pulmonary tuberculosis treatment response. She first joined Standard BioTools in November 2021 as a Field Applications Specialist for France & Switzerland and has been covering the UK&I territory since July 2022. She is mainly interested in new applications of single cell high tech, data mining, and highdimensional data visualisation to immunology and global health.”
Dr Jun Wang is a Senior Lecturer in Bioinformatics and Turing Fellow at Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London. He also leads the Cancer Research UK Barts Centre Bioinformatics Core Facility. He has broad research interests and experience in genomics and data science. These research areas mainly involve developing and applying bioinformatics and computational approaches to analyse large-scale omics datasets to uncover novel diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers, such as developing/applying deep-learning to integrate multimodal data. Jun has a strong publication record as (co-)first and senior author in high-impact journals like Nature Genetics, Cancer Discovery, Blood, Nature Communications, and is PI/co-PI and co-I (bioinformatics lead) of multiple interdisciplinary research programmes funded by CRUK, MRC, AMS, Barts Charity and industry.
General Physician (MD) and Experienced Researcher with a demonstrated history of working in the healthcare systems, academia and life sciences industry. Skilled in Epidemiology (Real-world data, Genomics and Clinical), Medical Statistics, Biomarkers, Data Science, Human Phenomics, Medical Affairs Strategy and Project Management. Medical research professional with a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Clinical Epidemiology and Medical Sciences from University Medical Center Groningen. Medical research lead at the University of Cambridge, Scientific and Management Consultancy at King’s College London and IQVIA Human Data Science. Data and Evidence Strategy, Epidemiology, Human Genetics and Medical Affairs in pharmaceutical industry
