Celebrating Women in Life Sciences
This year we mark International Women’s Day, held on 8th March since 1913, by recognising eight inspirational women from across MedCity’s life sciences community. They are innovators, entrepreneurs, and visionaries committed to transforming healthcare outcomes. While highlighting their achievements, we celebrate all of the dynamic women we work with who are actively engaged in growing the life sciences sector in London and beyond.
Dame Kate Bingham, Managing Partner of SV Health Investors
During her three decades at SV, Kate’s biotech investments have resulted in the launch of six drugs for the treatment of patients with inflammatory and autoimmune disease and cancer. Kate serves on the Board of the Francis Crick Institute, and from May 2020 undertook the unpaid role of Chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce. MedCity is fortunate to have Kate on our Advisory Board, alongside Dr Virginia Acha, Associate Vice President, Global Regulatory Policy at MSD, and Dr Annalisa Jenkins, a biopharma thought leader with more than 25 years’ industry experience and an advocate for diversity and inclusion, particularly for women in science.
Dr Lorin Gresser, CEO of Dem Dx
A doctor and entrepreneur, Lorin is founder of Dem Dx, an AI-powered digital health platform that allows clinicians, healthcare workers and students access tried-and-tested diagnostic reasoning pathways. The concept she devised to meet her own needs as a trainee doctor is now being used in over 160 countries. MedCity has helped Lorin through the Investment Hub and is currently supporting DemDx on the Digital Health.London Accelerator.
Florence Gschwend, Chief Technical Officer, Lixea
Chemical Engineering PhD and co-founder of cleantech spinout Lixea, Florence Gschwend is devoted to creating a new generation of eco-friendly materials as alternatives to common environmental pollutants. Florence sees the potential to create healthcare settings in which plastic packaging and components are a thing of the past. Florence and Lixea featured in MedCity’s recent sustainability report Unleashing Innovation 2021.
Gioia Cherubini, Senior Scientific Partnerships Manager, Achilles Therapeutics
Scientist Gioia Cherubini is dedicated to bringing Achilles Therapeutics closer to delivering a safe and effective treatment for solid tumours. Through MedCity’s Collaborate to Innovate programme, Gioia has worked with research collaborators at UCL on a project to identify the specific T Cell Receptor (TCR) on T cells recognising neoantigens, vital to neoantigen-based cellular immunotherapies.
Lucy Jung, CEO, Charco Neurotech
While completing an Innovation Design Engineering Masters, Lucy focused on developing a wearable technology that could alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease. To make the concept a reality, Lucy co-founded Charco Neurotech, worked with advisors and collaborators across the ecosystem, raised investment through MedCity’s Investment Hub during the pandemic, and recently began manufacture of the company’s first product, CUE1.
Suki Balendra, Life Sciences Lead, North West London NIHR Clinical Research Network
Suki completed her PhD in BioChemistry at the University of Warwick and has held roles in industry, NHS, government and academia for almost 20 years. At the North West London NIHR Clinical Research Network, she was responsible for setting up the North West London Clinical Trials Alliance during the pandemic, successfully delivering the Novavax trial, one of the first commercial COVID vaccine trials in the UK. The Alliance continues to grow under Suki’s direction and is now a partner in MedCity Diagnostics Growth Hub.
Mehak Mumtaz, COO, iLoF
Since establishing iLoF in 2019, Mehak and her co-founders have rapidly progressed the company. They are working to develop a new screening technique that combines AI and photonics to build a cloud-based library of disease biomarkers. Their innovative and democratised approach to personalised medicine helped them win Microsoft’s international Female Founders Competition for Deeptech start-ups in 2020. MedCity has provided iLoF with partnership connections and we recently welcomed Mehak as a member of MedCity Community, our virtual platform for supporting SMEs.
Dr Francesca Gliubich, Chief of Staff (Life Sciences) at King’s College London, and Director, UK Advanced Therapies
This time last year we featured Francesca as head of London Advanced Therapies LAT, a 2018 initiative connecting the London academic community in the field of cell and gene therapy across Imperial, UCL and King’s College London. Since then, Francesca has helped to unite advanced therapy networks across the nation under the umbrella of UK Advanced Therapies and taken on the role of Chief of Staff (Life Sciences) at King’s. The team at MedCity is proud to support Francesca’s work and the UKAT.
Finally, we take this opportunity to acknowledge the inspirational women in our leadership team – our CEO Neelam Patel @Neelam_P1, COO Nicki Bromwich @nicki_bromwich, Executive Director Sarah Haywood, and our Interim Chair Jo Pisani @Jpisani
Read more here on the women who are shaping life sciences.