Imophoron Senior Team
Richard Bungay - Chief Executive Officer
Richard was appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Imophoron in November 2022.
Richard was formerly Chief Executive Officer of AIM-listed Diurnal Group plc, where he led the sale of the company to Neurocrine Biosciences. Richard has over 25 years’ experience in senior roles in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors, including as CFO and COO at Mereo Biopharma and CEO of Chroma Therapeutics. Richard has been involved in fundraisings totalling over $250 million, along with the negotiation and execution of multiple business development deals. Richard also has extensive experience of taking novel drugs from research through to clinical development and commercialisation and has been involved with the development of six currently marketed drugs, including three novel biological agents.
Richard qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Deloitte and has a first class degree in Chemistry from Nottingham University. Richard is a Non-executive Director of AIM-listed Cambridge Cognition Holdings plc and privately-held Monument Therapeutics Limited.
Frederic Garzoni – Co-founder/Chief Scientific Officer
Fred is the Chief Scientific Officer for Imophoron and a co-founder of the company. He led the company as its founding CEO until November 2022 and its focused on development of the ADDomer technology and pre-clinical development of its product pipeline.
An inventor and entrepreneur with more than 10 years’ experience in managing R&D projects and high-tech platforms at top institutions, including European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Grenoble, The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). Mr. Garzoni has co-authored high-impact publications in top ranked journals including Nature and Science.
Fred led the production platform in the multimillion Euro EC consortium project ComplexINC, flagged as 'breakthrough' by the Commission, and delivered high-value drug discovery targets for global pharma enterprises. Award winning innovator, Fred received BBSRC Future Talent and Mobility Award 2017, SynBiCITE 4D-MBA Closest-to-Market Award and Start-Up Award. Fred moved from France to Bristol (UK) to incorporate and establish Imophoron Ltd. Fred has been appointed Franco-British Young Leader (2022 cohort) by the Franco-British Council.
Jonathan Hare Ph.D.- Head of Immunology
Jonathan is Head of Immunology at Imophoron with responsibilities for leading the vaccine design strategies for priority disease indications, working with key stakeholders and partners to deliver high quality data to advance candidates and supporting collaborators in developing the ADDomer platform.
Jonathan has 15 years’ experience in vaccine immunology and worked previously for International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) supporting vaccine and antibody clinical programs for HIV and Lassa Virus focused in lower- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Prior to that, he worked for Covance in the BioPharmaceutical CMC division, Emergent BioSolutions and Immune Targeting Systems Ltd working on protein and viral vector-based vaccines, for Influenza and tuberculosis respectively.
Jonathan has a Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine from King’s College, London and has more than 20 academic publications covering vaccine R&D, clinical development and public health.
Kapil Gupta - Senior Protein Scientist
Kapil is a highly skilled and experienced protein biochemist and structural biologist. He has more than 10 years’ experience in both producing recombinant proteins and conducting biochemical and structural analysis, for both academic and industrial purposes. Kapil obtained his PhD from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and has been working at the University of Bristol as a senior research associate. He is well versed in many cutting-edge technologies in the field of molecular biology, protein biochemistry, biophysics and structural biology.
Kapil has published more than 25 articles in the field including lead journals such as Science, Nature Communications, Nature structural and molecular biology, Nature methods and Cell Report. His extensive expertise in protein engineering, production and structural biology led him to discover a potential druggable pocket in the Spike protein of SARS-CoV2. He is an Indian national and currently resides in the United Kingdom.
Paul Hole Ph.D – Programme Manager
Paul’s role involves co-ordinating vaccine development pipelines and providing strategic support for development of the business and scientific programme. Paul joined the Imophoron team in April 2023.
Paul’s career began in academic research, starting with a final year project on mammalian genetics during his Natural Sciences degree at the University of Cambridge. Paul continued his academic research with a PhD at Cardiff University, focusing on understanding mechanisms of blood cancer development. From 2010-2018 during his postdoctoral positions, Paul was PI or Co-PI on grants totalling £2M+.
In 2018, Paul transitioned from academic to industrial research, as a Senior Scientist at ReNeuron Ltd. Over the subsequent 4 years prior to joining Imophoron, Paul was awarded 2 promotions, first to Principal Investigator and then to Programme Leader. Paul grew the research team from 2 to 8 scientists, and the Programme became the primary focus of ReNeuron’s pipeline. Paul’s team were responsible for delivering preclinical data on extracellular vesicle-based drug delivery vehicles. Paul has authored or co-authored 12 peer-reviewed publications both in industry and academia.