Board and Scientific Team
Vineeta Tripathi
Dr. Vineeta Tripathi is a global leader in drug development. As the founding CEO of Vitarka, she’s developing ENDOPORE, a technology that solves one of the biggest challenges in healthcare today—bringing drugs into the cell where they can treat disease.
Before starting Vitarka, Vineeta held research positions at Boehringer Ingelheim (2014-2017) where she identified several treatment targets in oncology and ophthalmology, discovering that these targets couldn’t be reached unless a new delivery system brought them into the cell. Realizing the scope of the challenge, she moved to Ipsen (2018-2021) where her sole focus was creating technologies that could bring drugs into the cell.
Vineeta gained her PhD in Genetics from the University of Nottingham (2006) where she focused on understanding the function of a genetic pathway responsible for the differentiation of the cranial sensory nerves in an embryo. Enrolling at the age of 20, as the youngest doctoral student in the university’s history, she developed a novel in vivo experimental system (chicken embryo), which she then used as a post-doctoral researcher at King’s College, London, to identify mutations in the TDP43 gene that cause the motor neuron disease. Her research was published in Science (2008, 2009), changing the way neurodegenerative diseases are researched and diagnosed, opening new pathways for drug development.
At Vitarka, Vineeta is now fundraising to bring ENDOPORE into the clinic for cancer indications, among others.
John Beadle
Dr Beadle is an accomplished entrepreneurial physician with a track record as a CEO, Chairman, and leader of innovative therapeutics companies. He has co-founded and grown several biotechnology companies focused on Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMP), including nucleotide-based vaccines, gene therapies, and cell therapies. His previous positions include Founding Chief Executive Officer of PsiOxus; Co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of PowderMed; Entrepreneur in Residence at Imperial College London; Vaccine Site Head at Pfizer; and VP of Global Medical Operations at GlaxoSmithkline.
Mayer Schreiber
With a clear vision to establish a world-class science park at Discovery Park, Mayer is determined to create an environment that promotes scientific breakthroughs and technological advancements.
Jim Faulkner
Dr Faulkner has previously held positions at Apple Tree Partners, Ascidian Therapeutics, Autolus Ltd, and GSK, where he was involved in the development of over 25 therapeutics including gene therapy and CAR-T assets that successfully reached the clinic. Jim’s skills in leading advanced therapy and biopharmaceutical development together with his experience in growing biotech companies will further strengthen the existing skills and expertise of the Vitarka Therapeutics team.
Stephen Chambers
After mentoring IndieBio life science startups since 2018, in 2020 Stephen joined SOSV full-time to co-found IndieBio NY. Stephen heads the IndieBio NY program, has a PhD in Molecular Biology, and has a deep background in entrepreneurship in the pharma industry.
Stephen was one of the founding scientists at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, working on many drug discovery programs including in the FDA approval of Agenerase & Lexiva. He went on to co-found Abpro Therapeutics, employing synthetic biology and immunology to accelerate antibody discovery and development.
Recruited as CEO of SynbiCITE, the Innovation and Knowledge Center for Synthetic Biology in the UK, he oversaw a dramatic growth in the synthetic biology innovation ecosystem with a record number of startups and fundraising in this sector. At the same time, Stephen co-founded Bio-start, the UK’s first Life Science accelerator.
Stephen has co-authored over 30 peer-reviewed scientific publications, including publications appearing in Nature and Cell, and has several issued patents. He has been featured in Huffington Post, Upstart, BioScience, and is a regular conference speaker and government advisor on Life Science innovation and entrepreneurship.
Recently awarded Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence at Imperial College London, Stephen is a Member of the Royal Society’s Industrial Fellows College and Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology.
Hassan Mahmudul
He has also worked at the birthplace of the CRISPR-Cas9 technology, Vienna Biocenter, looking at the role of transcription factors in stem cell differentiation during early embryonic development. He developed his interest in startups while working as one of the first employees for a leading start-up in Newcastle. He has also previously founded a venture-backed tech startup and prior to joining UKI2S, he worked as a start-up scout for Ada Ventures.
Tim Hammonds
Global expert and thought leader in early drug discovery with expertise in raising a significant series A round. Specializing in early drug discovery in the ‘valley of death’, the funding gap between academia and industry where the analysis, choice, financing and prosecution of ideas is seen as both difficult and high risk. Extensive experience in multidisciplinary discovery research, managing successful collaborations across all 3 arms of translational space; Academia, Biotech and Pharma.
Agnes Szafranek
“Agnes Szafranek is Head of R&D Operations at Vitarka Therapeutics. She has over 15 years of experience setting up and managing clinical trials at mid and large size CROs, over 7 years of experience managing clinical IT systems and has been managing 2 Innovate UK grants awarded to Vitarka Therapeutics since 2023. Her experience in project management in clinical research and her background in medicine help in moving Vitarka’s assets through preclinical development phase to First-in-Human trials.”