Imophoron 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.
Jackie McKen (nee Turnbull) - Commercial Director
Jackie is working with Imophoron to help build the team and carry out the role of Commercial Director.
Jackie trained as a pharmacist and has over 30 years of experience in Business Development and Licensing, including 15 years running her own consultancy business, Plexsus Consulting Services Ltd. Jackie has broad commercial experience, strategic insight and knowledge of the global biotech and pharmaceutical industry. Jackie works with start-up companies and larger biotechs, in multiple therapy areas including immune-oncology and vaccines, to identify and negotiate deals for the commercialisation of single assets or sale of companies.
Prior to working as a consultant, Jackie was Commercial Director for GeneMedix plc, a biosimilars company, where she was part of the team who completed a dual float of GeneMedix (GMX) on the London and Singapore Stock Exchanges. She has worked for PA Consulting Group, Novo Nordisk A/S, Boehringer Ingelheim and Warner Lambert. Jackie is on the Board of Carbometrics Ltd, following her involvement in the sale of Ziylo to Novo Nordisk A/S, which led to the spin-out of Carbometrics and served on the Board of CanImGuide Therapeutics AB, a Swedish immuno-oncology company.
Jackie joined the Imophoron Board in March 2020 and is involved in building the team.
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 12 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. IAVI is a global not-for-profit, public-private partnership working to accelerate the development of vaccines to prevent HIV infection and AIDS with an emphasis on delivering health benefits 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 12 academic publications. He was the Principal Investigator of a Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Pioneer Grant, “Comparative Evolutionary and Immunological Analysis of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer and HIV for the selection of novel immune targets” with Professor Charles Swanton (Francis Crick Institute) and Professor Sergio Quezada (UCL).
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.
Charlotte Fletcher - Junior Protein Scientist
Charlotte performs research for Imophoron as part of her PhD. Her work focuses on Imophoron’s RSV program, developing and manufacturing vaccine candidates along with analysing their structural, biochemical and biophysical properties.
Charlotte is a PhD student in the laboratory of Imre Berger, Imophoron’s co-founder, at the University of Bristol. Alongside Imophoron’s vaccine program, she is working to expand the utility of the ADDomer platform. She has contributed to the development of a novel antibody-like therapy for COVID-19 using ADDomer.
Charlotte graduated from the University of Manchester in 2020 with a First-Class Honours degree in Biology (MSci). Her interest in vaccine technologies first began during her Masters research project where she developed plant-based vaccines using red microalgae.
Georgia Balchin - Junior Protein Scientist
Georgia is a PhD student on a partnership program with the University of Bristol and Imophoron. During her PhD, Georgia has worked on the design of the ADDomer scaffold to produce ADDomer particles with enhanced thermostability that now form the core of all Imophoron vaccine candidates. Through this work she has become proficient in many biochemical, biophysical and structural techniques including cryo-electron microscopy and dynamic light scattering.
Georgia’s current work focuses mainly on Imophoron’s Chikungunya program to produce and characterise a range of vaccine candidates based on the thermostable scaffold that will go into pre-clinical and clinical trials.
Georgia graduated from the University of Bristol in 2020 with a First-Class Honors degree in Biochemistry (MSci). She was first introduced to the ADDomer particle as part of her Masters research project where she participated in work to functionalise the fiber binding cleft found on the surface of ADDomer particles.