BROKEN STRING BIOSCIENCES - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Laboratory Operations Manager

BIO Debbie has worked in molecular biology for over thirty years and has been working in genomics research since 1999. She has worked at the forefront of cutting-edge technology in both academia and biotechnology. She holds a degree in Genetics from UCL and has a PhD in functional genomics.

Job Titles:

• Director
• Scientific Advisor

BIO Dr Mick Fellows is the Director of CVRM Cell Therapy Safety at AstraZeneca in Cambridge UK. He earned his Ph.D in Pharmacology and Toxicology investigating topoisomerase II inhibition at Liverpool University. In the mid 1980's Mick joined Covance, where he developed and study directed a range of in vitro and in vivo genetox assays, becoming an authority on in vitro mutagenesis and phototoxicity. In 2001, Mick joined AstraZeneca, initially as a genetic toxicologists. However, over the last decade, Mick's research has focused on AstraZeneca's advanced medicine safety platforms, including genome editing and modified RNA therapies. Mick's current role is as the AZ biopharm cell and regenerative medicine safety lead. Mick has had the honour of serving as the president of the United Kingdom Environmental Mutagen Society and has worked on and chaired several international workgroups; including HESI, OECD, EFPIA and ICH.

Job Titles:

• CEO
• Co - Founder

BIO Felix is a co-founder and the CEO of Broken String Biosciences. He is the primary inventor of Broken String's DNA break mapping technology INDUCE-seq™ and holds an AstraZeneca-sponsored PhD in CRISPR genome editing and genomics from Cardiff University.

Job Titles:

• VP Quality and Operations

BIO Gavin has spent over 20 years in the genomics sector in research, operations and quality assurance roles. Before joining the team, he held senior quality and operational roles in several UK based start-ups most recently as Director of Quality and Operations at Biocrucible in which he led the company's expansion of staff, facilities, business processes and rapidly implemented an ISO 13485 quality management system. Prior to this Gavin was Associate Director of Quality at Illumina and helped set up and operate the accredited Illumina Laboratory Services in the UK to deliver the sequencing services for the successful NHS/Genomics England 100,000-genome project. He holds a PhD in genomics jointly received from the British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge and Gothenburg University, Sweden

Job Titles:

• VP Business Development
• VP of Business Development at Broken String Bioscience

BIO Jessica Rich serves as VP of Business Development at Broken String Bioscience. Prior to Broken String Biosciences, Rich was Senior Director of Sales and Regional Marketing at Bionano, and Senior Director, Commercial Development at Synthego, leading sales and marketing activities and commercial deal expansion. Prior to this, she served as Chief Commercial Officer at 54gene, where she led the company's commercial efforts. Earlier in her career, Rich worked 8 years as part of Illumina's commercial team expanding the use of microarrays into new markets and applications, spent 11 years in various sales, large account management, and channel management roles in biotechnology. Rich was an invited panellist at Harvard Medical School to represent her expertise in the field of genetics.

Job Titles:

• Business Advisor

BIO Robert is currently on the board of directors at Kala Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: KALA - ophthalmology) and Co-Founder and Venture Partner at Lux Capital Management, focusing on healthcare. Robert manages Lux's investments in Cala Health (neuroperipherals) and Kyruus (healthcare IT). Previous investments include Visterra, Inc. (acquired by Otsuka - infectious diseases), Cerulean Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: CERU - pharmaceutical nanoencapsulation), Magen Biosciences (acquired by PPD - dermatology), and Molecular Imprints (acquired by Canon - semiconductor imprint lithography). Robert is also an Advisor to UK/EU deep tech venture capital firm Outsized Ventures and UK-based gene editing company Broken String Biosciences Ltd. Robert was the founding CEO of Mahana Therapeutics (digital therapeutics), founding CEO of Harvard Medical School spinout Genocea Biosciences (NASDAQ: GNCA - vaccines) and founding CEO of Johns Hopkins spinout Kala Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: KALA - ophthalmology). Robert was nominated as Biotech CEO of the Year at the World Vaccine Congress and was selected as one of the "100 of the Most Inspiring People" by PharmaVoice Magazine. He was Co-Founder of Lux Research and has served as an advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Robert was also a member of Motorola's Research Visionary Board and has been an invited lecturer or panelist at MIT, Stanford, Yale University, Brown, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the National Cancer Institute, Georgetown, and the University of Virginia. He has been published in The Journal of Biomedical Materials Research and Nature Biotechnology. Robert graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.S. in Architecture and is a former member of the Regional Selection Committee for UVA's Jefferson Scholars Foundation.

Job Titles:

• Scientific Advisor

BIO Ross Chapman started his career in research in 2002, working as a Research Assistant at the MRC Genome Damage and Stability Centre (University of Sussex, UK). In 2006, he went on to join Prof. Steve Jackson's laboratory (Gurdon Institute, Cambridge), where his PhD research focused on the regulated assembly of DNA repair and signalling complexes at sites of DNA breaks. As a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow, Ross continued for a short postdoc in the Jackson laboratory, before leaving in 2010 to join Prof. Simon Boulton's laboratory at Cancer Research UK Clare Hall Laboratories (London), now part of the present-day Francis Crick Institute. There he studied the regulated interplay between the non-homologous end joining and homologous recombination DNA repair pathways, and their role in immune system development, carcinogenesis and cancer's response to therapy. Establishing his group in 2013 at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics (Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford), he was elected to Associate Professor in 2017. In 2020 his laboratory moved to join the MRC Molecular Haematology Unit (Oxford), where Ross holds Cancer Research UK and Lister Institute Fellowships. He is also a current member of the EMBO Young Investigator Programme. The Chapman group's major research is on genetic recombination mechanisms, and in particular, the role of the major DNA double strand break repair pathways. His group is particularly interested in how cells and different tissues strike an appropriate equilibrium between accurate and mutagenic DNA repair mechanisms, as a means to understand why faults in this regulation lead to cancer and immune-deficiency disorders. An end goal will be to devise innovative strategies to exploit these faults in cancer therapies.

Job Titles:

• Machine Learning Engineer

BIO Sam holds a degree in biomedical sciences (with honours) from The University of Sheffield, and a PhD in computational biology from The University of Bristol. He has experience working at the interface between AI technology and large biomedical datasets.

Job Titles:

• Co - Founder
• CSO
• Co - Founder of Broken String Biosciences and Professor

BIO Simon is a co-founder of Broken String Biosciences and Professor in Cancer Studies at the School of Medicine, Cardiff University. He is a leading expert in genome stability with more than 25 years' experience in the field. He has developed genomic tools used widely by industry partners. Simon was a Fulbright Scholar at the Southwestern Medical Centre at Dallas, Texas, and is Chair of the UK Genome Stability Network.

Job Titles:

• Scientific Advisor

BIO Steve Jackson is University of Cambridge Frederick James Quick Professor of Biology, and Head of Cancer Research UK Laboratories at the Gurdon Institute. His research has identified key principles by which cells respond to and repair DNA damage and helped define how their dysfunction yields cancer and other age-related diseases. Steve has received various national and international prizes, and is a fellow of the Royal Society and the UK Academy of Medical Sciences. To translate his academic work towards patient benefits, in 1997 Steve founded the drug-discovery company KuDOS Pharmaceuticals Ltd., then served as its part-time Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) until and after its acquisition by AstraZeneca. Several KuDOS-derived drugs are in clinical trials, with the most advanced, the PARP inhibitor olaparib/LynparzaTM, being a marketed drug for certain ovarian, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancers worldwide. In 2010, Steve founded Mission Therapeutics Ltd. (Babraham, Cambridge) to exploit advances in protein ubiquitylation and deubiquitylation to derive new medicines and served as its part-time CSO until 2018. Steve also co-founded and is CEO/CSO for Adrestia Theraeputics Ltd, which in late 2020 secured Series A investment by GSK and Ahren Innovation Capital (for which Steve serves as a Partner). Based on its precision genetic disease models, Adrestia is searching for new therapeutic targets, novel drug compounds new applications for existing drugs across various therapeutic arenas, and has a multi-year, multi-program collaboration agreement with GSK. Steve's academic laboratory in the Gurdon Institute is currently further defining mechanisms by which cells detect, signal the presence of and repair DNA damage, with a view to delivering new fundamental biological insights and identifying opportunities for better understanding and treating cancer and other diseases.

Job Titles:

• CTO

BIO Vincent has spent the last 19 years creating DNA sequencing technologies that have transformed life science research and healthcare. Prior to joining the team at Broken String he was VP of Technology at Exact Sciences Innovation. He arrived at Exact via their 2020 acquisition of Base Genomics, an Oxford-based startup developing novel DNA methylation analysis technology, where Vincent was CTO. From 2004 to 2020 he was at Solexa and then Illumina, where in his final role as Vice President of Core Consumable Development he led a global team responsible for developing assays and consumables for many of the most successful NGS platforms in the Industry including the Genome Analyser, MiSeq, HiSeq, NextSeq and NovaSeq platforms. Between 2004 and 2007 Vincent was one of the key scientists at Solexa and made critical contributions to the design & development of the sequencing chemistry that underpins Illumina Sequencing today. He holds an MA from Oxford University and a PhD from Imperial College London, both in Biochemistry.