Transforming curative cancer treatments

Peter Liu is a physician, scientist, and Forbes top 30 under 30 recognized entrepreneur with a decade of experience in cancer and molecular biology research and health innovation implementation.His cancer and medical innovation experiences span four continents, including having worked at the World Health Organization on medical device implementation for non-communicable diseases. He was President of the Oxford University Scientific Society, oldest society of its kind in the world, and the Executive Director of BRIGHT International, a health innovation think tank focusing on strategic implementation of medical innovations. He completed a Doctor of Medicine (MD) at the University of Toronto and a DPhil (PhD) in Clinical Medicine at the University of Oxford, where he was recognized as an Oxford-Hoffman International Scholar and Jesus College Graduate Scholar for academic merit.

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Andreas Halner is the President & Chief Operating Officer of Oxford Cancer Analytics, which he co-founded with Chief Executive Officer Peter Liu.  Andreas is a Forbes Europe Top 30 Under 30 for Healthcare and Science entrepreneur with a unique interdisciplinary background of medical and mathematical training. He completed pre-clinical medicine and a DPhil in Clinical Medicine and Machine Learning at the University of Oxford. Andreas has designed multiple new mathematical and clinical paradigms for defining disease states, developing algorithms for treatment outcome prediction and treatment monitoring. For five years, Andreas held the Head Pathology Tutor for Medicine post at St John’s College, leading one third of the medical curriculum for second year medical students and has also been the Chief Data Scientist of a European Clinical Research Collaboration on lung disease and has designed statistical analysis plans for a European-wide clinical trial.

Daniel Szulc is a physiologist turned engineer with a passion for innovation, collaboration, and communication. After completing a double major in physiology and chemistry he went on to achieve a doctorate in biomedical engineering at the University of Toronto, where he was recognized as a UofT Top Scholar and Graduate to Watch for his impact as a STEM innovator and role model. His academic and industrial research spans the fields of biology, chemistry, medicine and physics and has led to several peer-reviewed manuscripts, inventions and collaborative projects awarded millions of research funding geared towards clinical translation. Alongside his passion for research and discovery, Daniel has actively sought to promote scientific communication and translation by leading the operations and strategic initiatives of both a national not-for-profit, Science Rendezvous, and an early-stage medtech start-up, Integral Health Systems, which developed next-generation software tools for surgical staff and medical personnel. Through these endeavours, he established national initiatives which engaged 25,000 students and created interdisciplinary networks with over 1600 scientists, clinicians, and engineers from 100 different academic disciplines across North America.

Heinrich Roder is the founderof Biodesix with over two decades of experience in the biotech industry and commercialization. He has a track record of taking Biodesix from concept to IPO on the Nasdaq, and secure regulatory approval for a lung cancer liquid biopsy proteomics product, resulting in an annual revenue of $50million by 2023 and growing. He is a Rhodes Scholar with a PhD from the University of Oxford. With well-established experiences in liquid biopsy product commercialization and international networks, Heinrich is spearheading product development at Oxford Cancer Analytics.

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Junetha Syed Jabarulla graduated from Madurai Kamaraj University (India) in Microbial gene Technology. Following her Master’s she worked at the Department of Biotechnology, IIT Madras focusing on the Functional characterization of RASSFs in Lung adenocarcinoma through whole transcriptomics analysis. She received the Mitsubishi Corporation International Scholarship during her PhD in Chemical Biology at Kyoto University, Japan. Her PhD thesis focused on developing programmable DNA-binding small molecules as a therapeutic strategy to target the oncogene EVI1 at the transcription level. Following her PhD, Junetha joined as a Post-Doctoral researcher in the Department of Oncology, University of Oxford where she was working with DNA Repair in Cancer Treatment and Chromosome integrity groups on the identification of HDAC inhibitor targets in DNA repair pathway to lead new drug combinations or biomarker to increase the efficiency of radiotherapy and targeting H3K36me3-deficient cancer cells with new class of WEE1 inhibitor respectively. With more than a decade experience in target and biomarker discovery in cancer research Junetha has joined OXcan as a chief scientist.

Ella Mi is a medical doctor specializing in oncology with a dual background in computer science. She holds an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellowship in medical oncology at Oxford, and has led preclinical and clinical cancer research studies at the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London, with notable research achievements that includes identifying the most common genetic alteration in splenic marginal zone lymphoma, leading a longitudinal gastric cancer screening study and a machine learning programme to improve prognostication of brain tumours, which won the prestigious National Cancer Research Institute Award and received media coverage internationally. She obtained a 1st class Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and a medical degree at the University of Cambridge and has undertaken her Masters in Computer Science at the University of Oxford as a DeepMind Scholar. Ella has a keen interest in accelerating the clinical uptake of new medical technologies, and previously worked on Interventional Procedures at NICE and on commercial projects with Google Health and Huma.

Nikola's long-standing interest in biology led him to his current position as Machine Learning Scientist at OXcan. Here, he is working on applying his extensive knowledge in feature engineering and explainable AI to develop innovative, interpretable machine learning models and pipelines, particularly optimized for analyzing high-dimensional biological data. Nikola was originally trained as a theoretical physicist whose career spans academia, finance, and biotechnology. A graduate with honours in Physics from the he went on to earn his PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Oxford.

After his PhD, Nikola transitioned into the financial industry, where he sharpened his skills in machine learning. Working as a quantitative researcher, a data scientist, and eventually as a head of research, he gained valuable experience in various asset management companies across Europe.

Combining his background in physics, expertise in machine learning and passion for biology, Nikola is working to bring ideas to explore and innovate from the intersection of these diverse fields to make significant contributions in the field of biotechnology at OXcan.

Luke Hankey graduated from the University of Liverpool in 2019 with a degree in Biological and Medical Sciences with a project focus on lysis of cancer cells. Throughout his studies, he acquired the Liverpool Excellence Scholarship as merit for his work. He has since developed applications to showcase his passion for coding and combined this with his strong academic background. He has now moved into the field of Machine Learning as a Junior Programmer to aid in the statistical analysis of biological and clinical datasets.

Harriet is an experienced bioinformatics scientist with expertise in analysis of LC-MS based proteomics and phosphoproteomics data.

After completing her Master of Science (MSci) at the University of Birmingham, Harriet pursued a PhD ausing phosphoproteomics, proteomics and interactomics to characterise mechanisms of ligand-mediated and trafficking-dependent receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) signalling. After her PhD, Harriet joined a Manchester-based BioTech using phosphoproteomics for precision medicine, where she worked as a postdoctoral scientist across the entirety of the LC-MS phosphoproteomics pipeline, from sample preparation to data acquisition and analysis. Harriet is working with others in the OXcan team at the intersection of proteomics, bioinformatics, and machine learning to advance early cancer detection.

Dr Honglei Huang has over 20 years of experience in mass spectrometry-based quantitative proteomics from both academia and biopharma.

Before joining Oxcan, Honglei spent four and a half years at Oxford Biomedica, an industry leader in gene and cell therapy. He led a team that established mass spectrometry analytic platforms, developed DIA-MS-based relative quantitation and MRM-based absolute quantitation methodology, as well as implemented mass spectrometry analytics for the characterization of gene therapy products and Investigational New Drug (IND) applications.

Prior to industry, Honglei's research in academia spanned various areas of proteomics, including biomarkers for cancer and molecular diseases, molecular mechanisms of neuropathic pain, and the molecular signature of viable kidneys for transplantation at leading institutions including the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, UCL, and Universität Innsbruck. His work resulted in two patents and over 40 publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Honglei holds a PhD in proteomics from the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine (Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention).

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Priyanka Bhattarai was the Senior Manager of Global Commercial Access Partnerships at Pfizer, with over 7 years of experience in pharma and biotech, including Pfizer and Eli Lilly. In this capacity, she led commercial strategies in increasingly competitive areas, including oncology and vaccines, and drove project management for capital improvement initiatives. She has worked on the business development team of Oxford Cancer Analytics since 2023 and has since been contributing to market access and product deployment. She holds a MBA at the London Business School.

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Emma Mi is a doctor and clinical researcher, with focus in big data epidemiology and early cancer detection and risk prediction. She holds an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellowship at the University of Oxford, and has authored over 15 peer reviewed publications, including in the Lancet Digital Health, European Journal of Cancer and Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer. She has extensive experience in large health record data analysis, healthcare data management and governance, and has worked at NHS England, where she developed COVID-19-related data analytics and established the NHS Long COVID Registry. She obtained her medical degree from the University of Cambridge.

Mrunmayee has a background in the application of immunoassay techniques and transcriptomic analysis. She holds a Master of Biomedical Science Research with merit from the University of Bristol and a Bachelor of Biotechnology with distinction for outstanding academic performance. At Oxford Cancer Analytics, Mrunmayee focuses on contributing to the forefront of early lung cancer detection through an inexpensive and scalable test with unparalleled sensitivity and specificity.

Taryn has a strong background in analytical chemistry and protein science. She has worked as an Analytical Scientist for a CRO testing food and pharmaceutical products, and developed extensive experience in wet chemistry analysis and mass spectrometry. Prior, she was a Laboratory Assistant at Brenntag UK Ltd and worked at AkzoNobel through a Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Analytical Studentship. Taryn is applying her industry experience in mass spectrometry for early cancer detection at OXcan. She holds a MChem in Pharmaceutical Chemistry, First Class Honours, where she focused on the synthesis and evaluation of nano-molecularly imprinted polymers as a novel cancer treatment.