Who we are
John Beadle |
Executive Chair
John Beadle |
Executive Chair
John is Executive Chair of Stroma Biosciences. He has over 30 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. He was a Co-Founder, Board Director and Chief Medical Officer at Powdermed, a DNA vaccine company which was sold to Pfizer in 2006. He was then Entrepreneur in Residence at Imperial Innovations and the founding CEO of PsiOxus Therapeutics, a clinical stage cancer gene therapy company. John’s prior pharmaceutical career include roles at GlaxoSmithKline as VP of Global Medical Operations and at Pfizer as Vaccines Site Head. John obtained his medical degree at the University of Witwatersrand and his MBA from the London Business School.
Ingo Ringshausen |
Co-founder & CSO
Ingo Ringshausen |
Co-founder & CSO
His scientific training included a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Gerard Evan at the University of California, San Francisco. Ingo discovered PI3K as a therapeutic target in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia, which paved the way for developing kinase inhibitors. He started his own research group in 2008. After being awarded a CRUK senior fellowship, Ingo moved his laboratory to the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute in 2014. In 2020, he spun out Stroma Biosciences from his lab and is currently a Director and CSO of Stroma Biosciences.
Andrew Moore |
Co-founder & CTO
Andrew Moore |
Co-founder & CTO
Andrew is the CTO of Stroma Biosciences Ltd, who has expert knowledge of the scientific platform after working as a postdoctoral scientist in Ingo Ringshausen’s lab. Andrew has a first-class degree in Biological Sciences from the University of East Anglia and a PhD from the William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London. Having joined Ingo Ringshausen’s laboratory at the University of Cambridge, following his PhD, Andrew developed and optimised the platform utilised by Stroma Biosciences and managed the setting up and running of the academic laboratory. Andrew managed several research projects and achieved a co-first authorship and authorships in several research publications.
Clive Stanway |
Co-founder & Director of Drug Discovery
Clive Stanway |
Co-founder & Director of Drug Discovery
In recent times Clive has chosen to become an independent cancer drug discovery and development advisor. In addition to his drug discovery role with Stroma Biosciences, he is a non-executive director for Atelerix Ltd, CytoSeek Ltd and Babraham Research Campus and serves on the scientific advisory boards of 4Bio Capital, Cumulus Oncology, NonExomics LLP, ANGLE plc and Araris Biotech AG.
Clive has 25+ years’ experience in drug discovery serving with Xenova, Prolifix and Cancer Research Technology. Previously, he worked in academia as a molecular and cellular biology researcher at Imperial College and Oxford University.
Patrick Hextall |
Head of Antibody Development
Patrick Hextall|
Head of Antibody Development
Patrick has been involved in drug discovery and development for over 20 years. He started his biotech career at Cambridge Antibody Technology in drug discovery before moving into development programme management responsible for multiple early-stage CMC activities and a phase 3 programme. He moved to PanGenetics in 2006 before becoming a consultant in 2010 following the sale of PG110 to AbbVie.
Patrick has worked with many biotechnology start-ups and some larger biotechnology / pharmaceutical companies managing multiple biologics manufacturing projects from supplier selection through to early phase clinical trials and beyond. Patrick has also been involved in the due diligence activities leading successful funding rounds and exits for a number of these companies.
Esther Baena |
Head of Solid Tumour Biology
Esther Baena |
Head of Solid Tumour Biology
Esther is our Head of Solid Tumour Biology. Esther obtained her PhD in Molecular Biology in 2006 from the University Autonoma of Madrid. She was then awarded a prestigious fellowship from the Spanish Science Ministry and joined Professor Stuart Orkin’s laboratory at the Harvard Cancer Centre/Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Here she applied her knowledge of haematological diseases to solid cancers with a focus on prostate cancer. She developed organoid and mouse model of the disease and identified a hitherto unknown cell population driving castration resistance disease.
In 2014 Esther moved to the UK, starting her own research group at the CRUK Manchester Institute. She has been leading the Prostate Oncobiology lab at the CRUK Manchester Institute since 2014. In 2022 Esther joined Stroma Biosciences to develop our solid cancer platform to develop stroma therapies in prostate and other epithelial malignancies.
TONY RAYNHAM |
Head of Medicinal Chemistry
Tony Raynham|
Head of Medicinal Chemistry
Tony has over 25 years of pharmaceutical leadership experience, during which he has made significant contributions to numerous drug discovery programs which have delivered 4 clinical candidates. Tony gained his BSc (Hons) Chemistry Degree at Imperial College, London, his PhD at Northwestern University, USA and performed his Post-Doctoral studies at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.
He initially worked on anti-viral agents at Roche Products Ltd., where he worked with the team who discovered the first HIV protease inhibitor, Saquinavir. He then played a leading role in evolving Cambridge Discovery Chemistry into the Oncology Discovery Chemistry Department of Millennium Pharmaceutical R&D Ltd., and subsequently built the Medicinal Chemistry and Structural Biology Departments at Cancer Research Technology.
Most recently, he joined the University of East London where he wrote the Royal Society of Chemistry accredited BSc (Hons) Chemistry degree courses and co-founded the systems biology and machine learning drug discovery company, Oppilotech Ltd., for which he is currently Director of Medicinal Chemistry and Member of its Board.
Paul Wallace |
Non-executive Director
Paul Wallace |
Non-executive Director
Paul brings over 25 years of international business development experience, having worked across this role with several private and publicly listed companies. Currently, he is CBO at Mission Therapeutics Ltd and was previously EVP and Head of Business Development for Medivir AB during its transition from an early-stage R&D company into a profitable pharmaceutical company with commercial sales. He has been involved in several trade sales and has led the execution of multiple partnership transactions with major pharmaceutical companies: with a total deal value of $4.5B and resulting in the launch of two drugs, including the hepatitis C protease inhibitor, Olysio®. Prior to his roles in business development, Paul had a career in pharmaceutical research, developing antibody therapeutics for oncology indications. He carried out his PhD and post-doctoral studies in biochemistry at the University of Cambridge.
Michale Bouskila-Chubb |
Non-executive Director
Michale Bouskila-Chubb |
Non-executive Director
Michale is currently Senior Director, Due Diligence Director at AstraZeneca where she leads due diligence cross functional teams for major transactions. Michale was previously Head of Business Development at Healx, where she led the business development team and activities, and supported 2 consecutive rounds of investments, Series A ($10m) and Series B ($56m). Her work at Healx has been recognised with a PLG Business Development Award for Best Newcomer of the year (2018) and inclusion in the 50 Movers and Shakers in BioBusiness (2019). Michale brings over 10 years of business experience gained across management consultancy, technology transfer (Cambridge Enterprise) and pharmaceutical business development (Mundipharma, Astrazeneca, Healx). Before converting to business via an MBA from the Open University Business School, Michale had a research career in the field of physiology and metabolism. She also holds a Pharmacy Doctorate and a Toxicology Master’s degree from Paris V University and a PhD from the University of Dundee.
Michael Salako |
Investor Director
Michael Salako |
Investor Director
Michael has a first-class degree in Biochemistry, a PhD in Molecular Virology and Molecular Toxicology, an MBA focused on finance and entrepreneurship, postdoctoral experience in immuno-oncology, drug discovery expertise to Principal Scientist level and is a Certified Licensing Professional. He is the recipient of a number of awards and is active on the life science/healthcare startup scene.
