Dr. Cesare Spadoni is the founder and Chief Operating Officer of Oncoheroes Biosciences, a biotechnology company exclusively focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of new treatments for cancers in children and adolescents. Following the passing of his daughter Laura in 2006, Cesare founded the aPODD Foundation, a London-based charity focused on accelerating pediatric oncology drug development. As aPODD’s chairman and trustee, he is actively involved on a voluntary basis in drug repurposing projects, advocacy efforts and research collaborations with other childhood cancer charities. Frustrated by the lack of progress in new drug development for pediatric cancers, he then set out to take matters into his own hands by founding Oncoheroes. Cesare has over 20 years of experience in drug development in both scientific and commercial roles. Previously,he held senior business development positions at AMRI, Aptuit Laurus, ThalesNano and Auxiliis BV. Cesare started his career as research scientist in a pharmaceutical company (Eisai, London) and in academia (Institute of Enzymology, Budapest).
Cesare received his MSc in applied molecular biology and PhD in neuroscience from University College London, as well as his MBA from Central European University, Budapest.
Dr. Michael Stein is the CEO of Valo Therapeutics, a developer of novel cancer immunotherapies with a unique approach to delivering a highly immunogenic and rapidly adaptable tumor vaccination platform. Dr. Stein is a business leader and strategic advisor with C-suite experience in healthcare. Prior to joining Valo TX, Michael was the founding CEO of OxStem, an award-winning biotechnology spin-out from the University of Oxford, which broke the UK record for a seed round fund-raise. In addition, Michael has served as the founding CEO for Doctor Care Anywhere, acquired by Synergix. In 2001, he co-founded the Map of Medicine with University College London. As founding CEO, and later CMO, the Map was nationally licensed across NHS England and acquired by Hearst Business Media, after which Michael transitioned to executive vice-president of healthcare innovation. Michael graduated from the University of Cape Town as a medical doctor with Honours and biochemist with First Class Honours, and from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar with a doctorate in Physiological Sciences, Immunology. He subsequently was appointed as a Junior Research Fellow in Medicine at Trinity College, Oxford, subsequently lecturing part-time in Immunology and Pathology at Balliol College, Oxford. As a medical scientist, Michael first described the alternative pathway of macrophage activation. In addition, he has co-authored the best-selling UK medical handbook.
Dr. Valerie Vanhooren is the co-founder and CEO of ONA Therapeutics, a biotechnology spin-off of the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies and Institute for Research in Biomedicine. ONA Tx specializes in the discovery and development of therapeutic biologics targeting tumor metastatic-initiating cells and lipid metabolism, and potentially multiple metastatic cancers. Valerie’s specialties lie in drug development from early stage discovery to phase II clinical trials and generating biologics against targets in a broad range of therapeutic and diagnostic areas. Valerie completed her PhD in biotechnology and postdoctoral research at Ghent University-VIB. Prior to co-founding ONA Tx in May of 2019, Valerie led project developments at Ablynx, a nanobodies-focused subsidiary of Sanofi, Intelligent Pharma, acquired by the bioinformatics company Mind the Byte, and ProteoDesign, a protein engineering platform spin-out from Princeton University.
After losing her mother to metastatic lung cancer at age 11, Nicole resolved to find cures for diseases that interrupt young lives. She is co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of NeuScience, a cancer therapeutics company that leverages patient-derived cells and machine vision to target solid tumor cancers in a fundamentally new way. Nicole holds a Ph.D. in engineered tissue microenvironments from Stanford University, where she was awarded research fellowships from the National Science Foundation and Stanford for her work in regenerative medicine. She also brings deep expertise in machine learning and computer vision, having led the development of more than 10 machine learning products at startups as a Director of Data Science. In addition to her work at NeuScience, Nicole serves as a technical advisor for the Insight Artificial Intelligence Fellowship.
Philippe Halfon, MD, PhD, PharmD, is known as an opinion leader in virology. In 2001, he founded Genoscience Pharma, a biotech company. After his father passed away from a bladder cancer, he has committed to research in oncology. Today, the company is completing a phase 1b with a small molecule, GNS561, targeting the lysosomal compartment in cancer cells and cancer stem cells.
Beside Genoscience Pharma, Philippe has also created a medical laboratory, where he developed a molecular genetic platform dedicated to the screening of molecular and genetic mutations and aberrations to better evaluate prognosis in cancer patients.
Philippe is committed to shifting the cancer paradigm by developing new agents addressing a high unmet medical need. His strategy and innovation were recently acknowledged twice: Genoscience Pharma was awarded the Most Innovative Biotech SME in Healthcare in 2018 and was awarded a grant by Merck in the Biotech Advance Program.
Maria Zannes, President, Chief Executive Officer and Director of bioAffinity Technologies brings more than 30 years of executive experience in the medical and energy industries where she has built strong teams who meet ambitious goals. She was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Earth Engineering Center Award from Columbia University where she co-founded two research centers. She began her career as a journalist and later worked as a Congressional aide before starting her business career. In 2005, Maria turned her focus to advancing scientific research that led to the development by bioAffinity Technologies of a novel test for early lung cancer as well as other cancer diagnostics and therapeutics. Maria’s mother, father, brother, uncle, and cousins have been diagnosed and treated for cancer including those of the lung, breast, blood, lymphatic system, skin, brain, and kidney. She is inspired by their lives and their courage. Maria received her J.D. from the University of Puget Sound in Washington State. She has two brilliant sons who are pursuing careers in physical therapy and medicine.
Harry is Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Cambridge Cancer Genomics. He leads CCG’s tech team of AI researchers, data scientists and bioinformaticians to conduct innovative R&D and develop underlying tumour analysis pipelines and cloud architecture of CCG’s smart genomics systems. Harry has a PhD in bioinformatics from Oxford University and experience in postdoctoral roles, including at Cambridge University with Cancer Research UK; and in the biopharma industry, where he worked on developing biomarker-based medical diagnostics. As a researcher at CRUK, Harry came to realise the disparity between cancer research and available care. This truly hit home when, in 2016, a close friend was diagnosed with terminal cancer at 21, with all standard treatment options exhausted. His greatest aim in the work he does now is to bring all the amazing new treatment ideas seen in research, into the clinic.
I was diagnosed with T1DM in 2002 at the end of my engineering studies. I soon discovered the difficult art of insulin management. Coming from an engineering background with a specialization in control theory, I realized that the tools I had studied and used as an engineer, could possibly be used to describe and analyze the glucose metabolism for deciding a better matched insulin dose to avoid excessive hypo- and hyperglycemia and for reducing the glucose variability. I decided to try this on my own data in my master thesis with interesting results. Later, I defended my PhD thesis on optimization of insulin management using smart mathematical algorithms to aid in the decision-making. This patent-pending technology formed the foundation for DIANOVATOR. Now, I’ve joined forces with like-minded partners and hope to contribute to making life with diabetes easier to manage, with fewer hypos, better time-in-range and just an overall improved quality of life with less anxiety about glucose levels and dosing decisions.
Karl is a senior executive with more than 25 years of experience in managing international business operations. Improving diagnostics and treatment of cancer has been the major theme throughout his entire career. He started in the early 1990s at Siemens Medical developing PET imaging from research to clinical practice maturity. He then played a key role in successfully launching the CyberKnife, providing a very effective radiosurgical option for cancer treatment.
SafeHeal was founded in 2015 by MDSTART, a Paris-based incubator. Its Colovac device aims to avoid the need for a diverting ostomy in patients undergoing colectomy. Karl joined SafeHeal in 2017 and leads SafeHeal into bringing the Colovac device to market and allowing patients to significantly improve their recovery from colorectal surgery. Karl has multiple family members who have been affected by cancer. Karl holds a PhD in Elementary Particle Physics from the University of Paris.
Matt De Silva is the Co-Founder and CEO of Notable Labs. Notable is accelerating the process of determining which drugs or combinations are most likely to be effective for pediatric cancer patients. The company has built an automated laboratory that rapidly evaluates thousands of drug combinations on cancer cells relative to healthy cells. A report is generated which prioritizes the drugs that are most specifically active against cancer cells. Notable is actively focused on children with blood cancer, partnering with physician researchers at MD Anderson, Seattle Children’s, Stanford, University of Kansas, and UCSF, among others. Notable was founded in 2014 by Matt in an effort to find treatment options for his father who was diagnosed with Glioblastoma Multiforme, a deadly stage 4 brain cancer that recently claimed the lives of Beau Biden, John McCain, and Ted Kennedy. Headquartered in Foster City, California, the company employs more than 30 scientists and engineers and has raised over $22M from prominent venture capital firms such as Builders VC, First Round Capital, Founders Fund, Lightspeed Capital, and Y Combinator.