Zoe Hewitt

Co-Founder and CEO and Quality Management Specialist

Zoe has over 20 years of experience working with human Pluripotent Stem Cells. After obtaining her PhD from the Roslin Institute, Edinburgh in 2006, she moved to the Centre for Stem Cell Biology at the University of Sheffield where she was handed a newly built clean room facility and was asked to “make it work”. With over 15 years of experience developing Quality Management Systems, operating within a clean room environment and assisting with the early stages of cell therapy development, including with the UKs first-in-human clinical trial with a human embryonic stem cell derived therapy for Macular degeneration, Zoe’s focus is on sharing this experience with the wider regenerative medicine community to assist more therapies to make it to clinical trial, so that patients can receive their benefits.

Zoe was behind the team who derived the UKs first available clinical grade embryonic stem cell lines, has been an integral part of the UK Regenerative Medicine Platform since its inception and represented the field on the British Standards Institute committee for Regenerative Medicine. She also undertook an active role working with regulators at the HFEA, HTA and MHRA to resolve early regulatory issues which surround the translation of stem cells to clinical application, particularly when the European Union Tissue and Cell Directives were first introduced in 2005.

Roger Barker 

Co-Founder and Chair and Clinical Specialist

Roger is a Professor of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and a consultant Neurologist at the Addenbrooke’s Hospital. He has also been a director or lead investigator on a number of significant regenerative medicine focused initiatives such as GFORCEPD, STEMPD, the UK Regenerative Medicine Platform (UKRMP), Pluripotent Stem Cell and Engineered Cell (PSEC) Hub, the International Society for Stem Cell research (ISSCR) and is the current Lead Academic Scientist of the ARUK funded Drug Discovery Institute in Cambridge.

His research group is focused on better defining the clinical heterogeneity of two common neurodegenerative disorders of the nervous system – Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Huntington’s disease (HD). This has helped him define the best way by which to take new therapies including novel experimental therapeutics such as cell and gene therapies into the clinic.

Cedric Ghevaert

Clinical Specialist

Cedric is a Professor in Transfusion Medicine at the University of Cambridge and a consultant haematologist for the NHS Blood and Transplant Service. His research is focused on the production of blood cells in vitro with a particular interest in platelet and megakaryocyte biology. His group has developed expertise in the production of red cells and platelets from human pluripotent stem cells using methodologies that are compatible with the production of clinical grade products within the constraints of affordable manufacturing processes.

As a consultant haematologist, Cedric is the clinical lead for a first-in human study of stem cell-derived red blood cell survival and recovery in human volunteers. He has also recently secured a place on the prestigious NHS-funded “National Clinical Entrepreneur” programme and been made a Champion for the Department of Haematology at the Cambridge Academy for Translational Science.

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Florian Merkle

Fundamental Scientist – Specialising in the Mechanistic basis of Neurological Diseases

Florian leads a research group at the University of Cambridge as a New York Stem Cell Foundation Robertson Stem Cell Investigator and Sir Henry Dale Fellow. His research aims to uncover the mechanistic basis of human neurological diseases using human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC)-derived culture systems in order to facilitate the development of effective treatments. Specifically, his group generates novel differentiation strategies to produce a variety of neural cell types, and develops cellular and animal models of metabolic and neurodegenerative disease. He also helped uncover recurrently acquired structural genetic variants and point mutations in hPSCs, including in the tumour suppressor p53.
Florian is therefore also interested in the rational selection of hPSC lines and identifying strategies to suppress the expansion of undesired mutations in vitro in order to improve the reproducibility of fundamental research and the safety of translational approaches.

Wolf Reik

Fundamental Scientist – Specialising in Epigenetics

Wolf is an MD, an honorary Professor of Epigenetics at the Babraham Institute and the University of Cambridge and Fellow of the Royal Society. His research interests are in mammalian epigenetics, particularly in epigenetic reprogramming during mammalian development and its role in stem cell biology, inheritance and ageing.
Recently Wolf left his position as Director of the Babraham Institute to become Director of the Altos Labs Cambridge Institute of Science.  

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