Board members

In addition to being non-executive Chair of STORM Therapeutics Limited, Tim Edwards is a member of the Governing Board of Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, sponsored by the Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. Previously, Tim was Executive Chair of Atopix Therapeutics Limited, acquired by Chiesi Farmaceutici SPA in 2016, and President and Chief Executive Officer of Cellzome Inc, acquired by GlaxoSmithKline plc in 2012, Non-Executive Director of the Cell Therapy Catapult, Chair of the BioIndustry Association, and member of the Department of Health ‘Ministerial Industry Strategy Group (Life Sciences)’.

In addition, Tim is currently Chair of Governors of Magdalen College School, Oxford, a day school for pupils aged 7–18 with a co-educational sixth form, and a Fellow of the RSA, a charity founded in 1754, which drives ideas, innovation and social change.

Hakan is a senior investment director at Merck Ventures, corporate venture arm of the biopharmaceutical division of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.

Hakan joined Merck Ventures in 2013 and previously was investing as a partner at Aescap Venture and, prior to that, at Atlas Venture. Since 2006, Hakan was instrumental in the creation, financing, and strategy of multiple biotechnology companies globally including Asceneuron (CH), Orphazyme (DK), Nimbus Discovery (US), F Star (NL), Bicycle Therapeutics (UK) and Nitec, now Horizon Pharma (CH/US).

Hakan received his PhD in cancer biology from the Institute of Cancer Research / University of London and continued his scientific career with post-doctoral work at the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Centre / Royal Marsden Hospital. He gained his BSc Honours from University College London.

Hakan is a board member of Asceneuron, Artios Pharma, Forendo, Raze Therapeutics, Tocopherx, Synaffix, and STORM Therapeutics.

Elaine joined Pfizer Venture Investments as Executive Director, Venture Capital in 2008. She is responsible for making and managing venture investments for Pfizer and currently oversees the PVI investments in Autifony Therapeutics Ltd (London, UK), Blade Therapeutics (South San Francisco, CA), Mersana Therapeutics (Cambridge, MA), Mission Therapeutics (Cambridge, UK), Nimbus Therapeutics LLC (Cambridge, MA), Quartet Medicine (Cambridge, MA), Second Genome (San Francisco, CA), STORM Therapeutics (Cambridge, UK), and Ziarco Pharma (Canterbury, UK). Elaine brings 17 years of venture capital experience and a strong background in research and product assessment, built on her significant experience in pharmaceutical drug discovery and business development to the PVI team.

Most recently, Elaine was a General Partner with the venture fund EuclidSR Partners. There, she was responsible for the fund’s investments in Acurian, Fluidigm, InnaPhase and Targacept.

Prior to joining ESR, Elaine began her private equity career in 1999 at SR One, GlaxoSmithKline’s venture fund, where she managed investments including Adolor, Avantium, Nucleonics, Scynexis and Vicuron. Previously, she served as Director of Scientific Licensing for SmithKline Beecham and was a research scientist in SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceutical R&D.

Elaine is a graduate of Juniata College and received her PhD in Microbiology from the University of Pittsburgh.

Sakae Asanuma joined Taiho as the founder of Taiho Ventures in 2016. Prior to joining Taiho, he was President and CEO at Astellas Venture Management and US Head of Astellas Innovation Management. At Astellas, he closed more than 10 research collaboration deals with academia and biotech ventures, including establishing six new build-to-buy or spin-out companies. Prior to working at Astellas, he was General Manager at Yasuda Enterprise, a Japanese VC firm with $800M under management. He has invested in more than 35 companies, achieving 11 IPOs and 8 M&As to date as a Bay Area-based biotech venture capitalist since 2000.

Tony is Professor of Cancer Biology at the University of Cambridge, Deputy Director of the Gurdon Institute and Director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute.

Tony serves on the Executive Board of the Cambridge Cancer Centre and on the Scientific Advisory Board of two institutes in Spain (CRG in Barcelona and CABIMER in Seville). He is the founder and director of Vencer el Cancer (Conquer Cancer), a cancer research charity in Spain.

Tony is a co-founder of Abcam plc, and a co-founder of Chroma Therapeutics.

Tony has been elected member of the European Molecular Biology organisation, is a Fellow of the British Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci), Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), and is a Cancer Research UK Gibbs Fellow. He has been awarded the Wellcome Trust medal for research in biochemistry related to medicine (UK), the Tenovus Medal (UK), the Bodossaki Foundation prize in Biology (Greece), the Bijvoet Medal (Holland), the Biochemical Society Award Novartis Medal and Prize (UK) and the Heinrich Wieland Prize (Germany).

Eric is the Herchel Smith Professor of Molecular Genetics and a Senior Group Leader at the Gurdon Institute at the University of Cambridge. He has an appointment as associated faculty at the Cambridge Systems Biology Centre and the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Research Institute. Eric was an EMBO Young Investigator and is a full member of EMBO since 2012. Eric is the 2013 recipient of the Hooke Medal awarded by the British Society of Cell Biology. He joined the faculty of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton in 2014 and is a Senior Investigator of the Wellcome Trust.

Eric studied mathematics, physics and biology at Heidelberg, Berlin, and Mainz, and holds a BA in Biochemistry from Trinity College, Dublin. He received his PhD in Pathology from the University of Cambridge, UK, in 2000, working with Professor Tony Kouzarides, and was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Nobel laureate Bob Horvitz at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA from 2000 to 2004. He started his own research group at the Gurdon Institute in 2005.

Keith joined STORM Therapeutics as CEO in January 2017. Prior to STORM (from 2007), Keith was Chief Executive of Cancer Research Technology Ltd, the commercial arm of Cancer Research UK (CRT), where he drove the development of CRT to become a global leader in the commercialisation of cancer discoveries. He was instrumental in the launch of the £70m Cancer Research Technology Pioneer Fund in partnership with the European Investment Fund (EIF) and BACIT, developed risk sharing drug discovery alliances with AstraZeneca, Teva (formerly Cephalon), Forma, Merck, and MRCT, negotiated the formation of the CRUK – Medimmune antibody therapeutics laboratory and developed CRT’s geographical reach through establishment of CRT Inc. in Boston (USA) and partnership with Cancer Therapeutics Pty in Melbourne, Australia.

After completing a PhD at the John Innes Institute and a post-doctoral Fulbright scholarship in the US on the regulation of plant gene expression, Keith spent ten years managing and commercialising agricultural biotechnology programmes before transitioning to healthcare through business development at CRT. Keith has a BSc and PhD in genetics and an MBA from the London Business School. He was formerly a director of KuDOS Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Mission Therapeutics and Cancer Therapeutics Pty and is currently on the board of Inivata Ltd and chairman of Cizzle Biotech.

Paul is Harrap Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the ICR, as well as the former Head of the Division of Cancer TherapeuticsDivision of Cancer Therapeutics and former Director of the Cancer Research UK Cancer Therapeutics Unit from 1997-2016 - a period of 18 years.

A leader in the field of molecularly targeted cancer drugs, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society, Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal Society of Medicine, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Royal Society of Biology and is a Cancer Research UK Life Fellow. Paul's research focus is the discovery and development of cancer drugs that exploit our knowledge of the cancer genome and cancer biology and his passion is personalised medicine.

He has won numerous awards that are listed in his Biography (https://www.icr.ac.uk/our-research/researchers-and-teams/professor-paul-workman).

Christine is Investment Manager (Life Sciences) at Cambridge Enterprise Seed Funds. Christine joined Cambridge Enterprise in 2012 as part of the Tech Transfer team managing licensing of University IP; including licenses to Cambridge spin-outs STORM, Carrick, and CEGX and managing the formation of the spin-out Z-factor. Christine also managed the University of Cambridge-GSK open innovation drug discovery initiative based at the SBC, working closely with academics to gain funding to develop translational projects. Prior to that, she enjoyed 10 years working for Biotica, a biotechnology spin-out from the University of Cambridge as Department Director and Project Leader.

Christine has an MA and DPhil in chemistry from the University of Oxford.

Dr 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, Congenica and Storm Therapeutics.

Bobby is currently Life Science Partner at IP Group plc. He joined Touchstone Innovations (now IP Group) in 2015 from Novo Seeds, the early stage investment arm of Novo AS where he worked as Investment Director. Bobby has 17 years' experience in the Life Science industry covering drug development, business development and venture capital investment. In addition to Enterprise Therapeutics, he is a Non-Executive Director of Storm Therapeutics, Artios Pharma, Pulmocide, Autifony, Oxular, and Mission Therapeutics.

Bobby holds a PhD in Biology from the University of Virginia and an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from the University of Rochester.