Co-founders
Professor Ahmed Ahmed
Professor Ahmed is a Professor of Gynaecological Oncology at the Nuffield Department of Women’s & Reproductive Health, University of Oxford and the Director of the Ovarian Cancer Cell Lab at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine. Ahmed is an Honorary Consultant Gynaecological Oncology Surgeon at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust and a Fellow by resolution at St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford. Ahmed discovered that TP53 mutations are ubiquitous in high grade serous ovarian cancer and introduced a new classification of serous ovarian cancer, “the Oxford classic”. Ahmed’s lab developed novel sequencing and analysis methods for studying mutational processes in cancer. His work identified pathways to overcome chemotherapy resistance and identified novel targets for therapy. Ahmed won several prestigious national and international fellowships, prizes and awards. He holds an MBBCH from Ain Shams University in Cairo, a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He received postdoctoral training at the CRUK Cambridge Institute and the MD Anderson Cancer Centre, University of Texas.
Professor Vincenzo Cerundolo
Professor Cerundolo (Enzo) was a Professor of Immunology at the University of Oxford and the Director of the MRC Human Immunology Unit at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford. He was also a Fellow of Merton College. Enzo was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. Enzo made some seminal discoveries in processing and presentation of cancer and viral antigens in cells. He was also known for his contributions in understanding the biology of invariant NKT cells. Enzo discovered how the TAP genes are involved in peptide presentation to MHC Class I molecules. Enzo obtained his medical degree in the University of Padua and completed a higher degree in the Institute of Oncology, University of Padua. Enzo completed his postdoctoral research at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine. Enzo’s work with Ahmed established the foundation of Singula Bio before he sadly died in January 2020.
Professor Enda McVeigh
Professor McVeigh is an Associate Professor at the Nuffield Department of Women’s & Reproductive Health, University of Oxford. Enda is a subspecialist in Reproductive Medicine and Surgery. His research focuses on Reproductive Medicine, Endometriosis and Ovarian tissue cryopreservation. Enda was Medical Director and Lead Consultant in the Oxford Fertility Unit from 1999 until 2012. In 2011 he initiated and was one of the Founding Partners of an IVF clinic network (Reproductive Partnership) which is now the largest in the UK. Enda obtained his undergraduate degree from Queen’s University Belfast. After obtained his MRCOG he completed his Subspecialist training in Reproductive Medicine in Oxford. Enda established the Endometriosis surgical service in Oxford that eventually became a national referral centre. He was appointed as an Associate Professor in 2014.
Company Directors
Dr Richard Auburn
Dr Richard Auburn is a Senior Licencing and Ventures Manager at Oxford University Innovation: the technology transfer company of the University of Oxford. Oxford University Innovation maximises the impact of the University of Oxford’s research through licensing and forming new companies.
Richard has a B.Sc.(Hon) in Microbiology and Genetics from the University of Aberdeen and a PhD in Genetics from the University of Cambridge. Before joining Oxford University Innovation, Richard’s work spanned establishing an academic cost-recovery genomics facility (Cambridge), academic research in genome structure (papers in Nature and Science), applications scientist (throughout Europe) and developing commercial molecular diagnostic assays (genetic assays). These projects were multinational collaborations that included developing and implementing genetic, molecular, automation and bioinformatics solutions. The commercial projects simultaneously involved obtaining key opinion leader input, establishing quality management systems, and supervising/supporting external partners
Mr John Bateson
John Bateson is Managing Director of International Investment and Underwriting (“IIU”), which is a private equity investment company owned by Dermot Desmond, one of Ireland’s most successful entrepreneurs and investors. John was awarded a Bachelor in Business Studies degree from Trinity College Dublin in 1985 and subsequently joined KPMG in Dublin where he qualified as a chartered accountant. John left KPMG in 1989 to join NCB Group, then Ireland’s largest independent stockbroker, where he was a member of the corporate finance advisory team. John joined IIU on its establishment in 1995 and, as a senior investment executive since its inception, and now Managing Director, he has been intimately involved in the creation of the current portfolio of investments. John has over 20 years’ experience of active participation at Boardroom level across a wide range of sectors and including four publicly quoted companies. He is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland and a member of the Institute of Directors.
Non-Executive Director- Dr. James Hall
James is currently CEO of Betagenon AB, a Swedish clinical stage biotech. He has held several senior Commercial, R&D and Business Development roles at AstraZeneca, including VP Global Marketing CV Therapy Area, VP Global Product Development for CRESTOR/rosuvastatin and VP Search & Evaluation for the CV/Metabolism/Renal Therapy Area. He has previously worked in the Pharma/Biotech practice at McKinsey & Co. He has a D.Phil in Cell Physiology and BM BCh (Clinical Medicine) from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He completed BM BCh Part 1 (Preclinical Medicine) at University College Cork.
Scientific Advisory Board Members
Dr John Castle
Dr John Castle is an expert in computational biology and the Chief Data Scientist at Monte Rosa Therapeutics. John enjoys integrating AI/ML, computational immunology, bioinformatics, biotechnology, and genomics. Having built translational bioinformatics and genomics units focused on immunotherapies, John pioneered ‘omics and computational approaches to neoantigen identification for anti-tumor immunity, revolutionizing neoantigen vaccine platforms, TCR target identification and I-O response biomarkers. Prior to joining Monte Rosa, he was Associate Vice President for Translational Sciences at Agenus, served as associate director at Rosetta Inpharmatics/Merck & Co. and co-directed the Biomarker Development Center of Translational Oncology at the University of Mainz, Germany. John built the bioinformatics and genomics department at BioNTech AG. John studied physics at Rice University in Houston and at the University of Göttingen in Germany, was a Fulbright Scholar at the Australian National University in Canberra and received his Ph.D. in geophysics from the University of Washington in Seattle.
Professor Michael Dustin
Professor Michael Dustin, an international expert in cancer immunology, is Professor of Immunology at the University of Oxford and Director of Research at the Kennedy Institute, University of Oxford. Mike established his first lab at the Department of Pathology, Washington University. While there, Mike and his colleagues discovered requirements of T cell Immunological Synapse. He continued his work on dynamics of immune responses using intravital microscopy at the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at New York University. At NYU Mike was director of the NIH funded Nanomedicine Centre for Mechanobiology, including cellular immunotherapy pioneer Carl June, from 2009-2014. In order to further advance studies on the immunological synapse and translation to treatment of human diseases he moved to the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at the University of Oxford in 2013 supported by a Principal Research Fellowship from Wellcome and the Kennedy Trust for Rheumatology Research. His work in Oxford has led to discovery of novel supramolecular assemblies unleashed at the synapse. Mike has a BA in Biology from Boston University and a PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology from Harvard University. He completed his postdoctoral training in the Division of Haematology and Oncology at Washington University.
DR Mark Exley
Mark Exley, PhD, is the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of Imvax. Mark was previously Vice President, Cellular Immunology for AgenTus. Mark is a world- renowned expert in the biology and clinical application of NKT cells. Mark led the development of viable cell products to clinical application. Mark’s areas of research have included natural and vaccine-supported immunity to cancers, immune responses to acute and chronic viral infections, suppression of graft-versus-host disease (a major complication of bone marrow and stem cell transplants), obesity-associated diseases and other inflammations. Mark has published over 120 articles in scientific journals and has received numerous research awards and grants. Mark was on faculty at Harvard Medical School and at the University of Manchester, UK, where he retains honorary appointments, and was a scientist at Immulogic, Inc. He received his BS from Imperial College, London and his Ph.D. from the Institute of Cancer Research, London. He completed his post-doctoral fellowship at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.
Dr Alena Gros
Dr Alena Gros is a principal investigator at the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) in Spain. Following her PhD, Alena completed a Postdoctoral Training Fellowship in Dr Steven Rosenberg’s group at the National Institute of Health, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, USA. Her work lead to the identification of markers that could guide the isolation of T cells that react to cancer in patient’s tumour and blood. These findings have paramount importance in making T cell therapies available for treating cancer patients. Alena’s work at the VHIO focuses on developing personalised T cell therapies for solid malignancies. Alena obtained her PhD from the University of Barcelona in Spain.
Professor Christopher Yau
Professor Christopher Yau is Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Manchester. He holds a UKRI Turing AI Fellowship and is co-Director of the Health Data Research UK-Turing Wellcome PhD Programme in Health Data Science.
He received his undergraduate degree in Engineering at the University of Cambridge and a D.Phil in Statistics from the University of Oxford. He was previously a Lecturer in Statistics at Imperial College London, Associate Professor in Genomic Medicine at the University of Oxford, and Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Birmingham.
His research is focused on the development of advanced artificial intelligence technologies for the interpretation of high-dimensional data arising from state-of-the-art molecular technologies particularly in the study of cancer.
He sits on the Better methods, better research panel at the UK Medical Research Council and leads the Machine Learning Clinical Interpretation Partnership as part of the Genomics England 100,000 Genomes Project. He is a founder member of the Academy of Medical Science Taskforce that developed the cross-sector leadership development FLIER programme.
Our Scientists
Lili Wang
Lili is an experienced immunologist with expertise in cancer immunotherapy and infectious disease. She is a Principal Scientist in translational immunology at Singula Bio and is responsible for building and implementing the company’s immunology pipelines. Prior to joining Singula bio, Lili worked at Adaptimmune Therapeutics Plc using genetic engineering, in-vitro reprogramming and combination therapies to improve adoptive T cell immunotherapy. As an academic, Lili spent 10 years at the University of Oxford, where her research, focused on T cell responses to infectious diseases ranging from fundamental research to clinical studies. She completed her D.Phil at the University of Oxford within the division of Clinical Medicine where her research focused on T cell mediated protection of the general population against seasonal and pandemic influenza.
Amro Ahmed-Ebbiary
Amro is an experienced cell biologist who has a worked in both conventional oncology and immune-oncology settings. He is a Principal Scientist in cancer immunology at Singula Bio, responsible for developing 3D primary tumour organoid models. Prior to joining Singula Bio, Amro held positions at a number of biotech companies spanning multiple functional areas including target validation, pipeline testing, preclinical research and clinical operations. He has a particular interest in using primary cancer cells as a model for preclinical testing, his passion being deriving cultures of cancer cells from fresh samples and then finding ways to kill them. Amro holds an MSc in Biomedicine from Lancaster University and a PhD in Oncology from the University of Liverpool but his most important title by far, is Dad.
Dr Joel Nulsen
Dr Joel Nulsen is a Senior Scientist in Computational Biology at Singula Bio, and was the first full-time researcher to start at the company. He is responsible for building and implementing the company’s core bioinformatics pipelines, from processing raw DNA and RNA sequencing data to prioritising clinically actionable mutations for immunotherapy. He is also developing Singula’s patented algorithm for accurately identifying mutations from picogram quantities of DNA, MutLX, for clinical use. He is particularly interested in using statistics, machine learning and artificial intelligence to realise the potential of genomic medicine and improve patient outcomes. He submitted his thesis for a PhD in Computational Biology from King’s College London in 2021, where his research focused on understanding how inherited genetic variation can shape the evolution of individual tumours. He also holds a master’s degree in Mathematics from Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained a Distinction with a focus on theoretical physics.
Dr Nosheen Hussain
Nosheen has joined Singula Bio as a Scientist in Cancer Genomics. She has extensive experience in next generation sequencing and library preparation techniques for DNA and RNA. She will be responsible to design, develop and optimise next generation sequencing assays for comprehensive genomic characterisation of solid tumours. Her focus will be to develop company’s patented whole genome library pipeline, DigiPico, using picograms of DNA to accurately identify functional mutations in small population of cancer cells. This will lead to identification of potential neoepitopes for patient targeted immunotherapy. During her PhD at University of Warwick, she developed a unique in vivo system- iNOMe-seq, to simultaneously measure chromatin accessibility, nucleosome occupancy and methylation. The method led to identification of important genomic features, especially regulatory regions with great accuracy in plants.
Aws Al-Deka
Aws Al-deka is a Research Assistant in Immunotherapy at Singula Bio. Aws is responsible for conducting day-to-day research activities and providing assistant to Singula Bio’s Scientists. Aws has recently graduated with a master’s degree in Oncology from the University of Manchester, where he achieved a Distinction and was awarded the Best Student Award of 2020 for obtaining the highest marks. His MRes research project focused on the role of combining radiotherapy and immunotherapy for the treatment of solid tumours. He previously did a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Science at Keele University, where he obtained First Class Honours. In recognition of the quality of his final-year thesis, which focused on the role of pH in breast cancer, he was awarded two prizes. Aws is motivated to carry on his research journey and advance his understanding of cancer further, through a PhD study in cancer immunology.