Meet Our Team
Ashley Cooper
Chief Executive Officer
Ashley Cooper is an experienced life science CEO with 33 years’ commercial experience spanning the animal health, veterinary/clinical diagnostic, food diagnostic, pharmaceutical and biotech/biomedical sectors. He has managed the development, launch and marketing of complex life science products and services in Europe, South Africa, USA and Asia. Ashley’s early career was spent with GSK’s animal health division and IDEXX Laboratories in its formative years, during which he was responsible for the establishment of its highly successful UK subsidiary. Much of his career however has been spent in the establishment of start-up and early stage life science companies, of which 12 have been in the position of either Vice President or Chief Executive Officer (on a full time, part time or interim basis). Since 2000 all of these ventures have involved the commercialisation of ex-academic IP and the establishment of academic spin out companies. Ashley was at its inception the CEO of Manchester (UK) based specialist anti-fungal company F2G Limited, which currently has two lead compounds in phase II clinical development. In all of these various roles, Ashley has raised significant private equity, venture capital and debt finance.
Shailendra Singh is an experienced life science research scientist with 17 years’ academic and commercial experience in diagnostic, pharmaceutical and biotech/biomedical sectors. Originally qualifying as a medical doctor specializing in immunology, he then went on to establish his own company, Cellomatics BioSciences Ltd, a Nottingham (UK) based preclinical CRO laboratory which he still runs today. Cellomatics provides preclinical testing services in Oncology, Immuno-Oncology, Inflammation, Immunology and Respiratory therapeutic areas.
Shailendra has a strong track record in the management of technical/research organisations to cGMP quality standards and in the identification/discovery and characterisation of targets for in vitro validation work.
Stuart Gibson
Chief Financial Officer
Stuart Gibson is an experienced CFO who since 2001 has focused on early stage biotech and technology companies. In 2001 he joined Arakis Ltd and was involved in raising £49M of venture capital, a worldwide licencing deal with Novartis for COPD treatment (AD237/QVA149 - now both approved treatments on the market) and the subsequent sale of Arakis to the Japanese quoted pharma company Sosei for £106M in 2006.
Stuart was appointed as the EVP of Finance in Sosei shortly after and raised further funding on the Tokyo stock market before leaving in 2008. From 2008 to 2015 worked for ARKeX a new technology company operating worldwide in the Oil & Gas services sector. During his tenure he raised over £40M of capital in equity & debt instruments, and was involved in contract negotiations with customers and business partners globally including North Africa, Middle East and China.
Chris Nicklin has over 30 years of Technical Operations experience with both blue chip and private equity backed organsiations in the Pharmaceutical, Fine Chemical and Life Science sectors. Starting at Ciba-Geigy and later with Novartis, Chiroscience and UCB in Belgium, he was responsibile for Process Development, Technology Transfer, Scale-up, Outsourced Manufacturing, and Global Supply Chain and has supported all stages of the product development life cycle, from late stage research through to development, launch and commercial supply.
In 2009 Chris joined the Life Science start-up, Reinnervate where he recruited and developed the Technical Operations team including QC/QA, Process Development, Purchasing, Planning and Logistics, and Production and oversaw the design and construction of a 5,000 sq ft facility including a purpose built manufacturing lab and class 10,000 clean room.
Following the trade sale of Reinnervate to the Japanese company ReproCell Chris has focused on the development of assets and technical operations for 5 further Start-ups / SME’s.
