Leadership team

Dr Catherine Elton
Dr Catherine EltonCEO & Founder
Catherine graduated from King’s College, University of Cambridge and received a PhD in Biochemistry from Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge. In 2003, she joined Abcam where she was a member of the senior management team responsible for R&D and product manufacture. At Abcam, she scaled the in-house laboratory and manufacturing facility from 4 to 40 people and to a 17,500 sq ft dedicated facility. Following a career break, she returned to academic research in 2015 as a Daphne Jackson fellow at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. She co-founded Qkine, a specialist manufacturer of complex bioactive proteins in 2016, whilst completing her academic fellowship. Qkine combines proprietary protein production process development with protein engineering techniques to develop unique and exceptionally high-purity products that tackle fundamental biological and scale-up challenges for the fast-growing stem cell, organoid, regenerative medicine, and cellular agriculture sectors; areas she believes underpin future advances in human health and wellbeing.
Clair Parsons
Clair ParsonsHead of Finance
Clair has over 30 years of experience in finance. Prior to working at Qkine, Clair was the Head of Financial Planning and Analysis at Abcam. During the 15 years that she worked at Abcam, Clair helped to scale the finance department from just one member of staff to a team of more than 50 people. During her career she has supported three start-up companies through their early growth phases, including Syndicate Room. Clair joined Qkine in 2020 to help build scalable systems and processes within Finance and Operations to enable the company to move into the next phase of its growth.
Dr Andy Day
Dr Andy DayHead of Product Development and Manufacture
Andy is a molecular and cell biologist with over 20 years of experience in product development and manufacturing. He graduated from the University of Sheffield in 1995 before joining PIC, based in the Department of Pathology at the University of Cambridge. Whilst at PIC, Andy studied part-time for a Ph.D. investigating genes involved in porcine male fertility. He worked at Abcam from 2007 – 2018, before moving to the Wellcome Sanger Institute as a Senior Scientific Manager within the Cellular Generation and Phenotyping team. He joined Qkine in 2022 to expand both Manufacturing and Product Development capabilities within the company to ensure the continuous supply of high-quality reagents to customers whilst meeting future demands.
Dr Luana Ferrara
Dr Luana FerraraResearch and Development Manager
Luana obtained her Masters degree in Functional Genomics from the University of Trieste, Italy, before completing a Marie Curie funded Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of St Andrews, Scotland. She has over 10 years of research experience in the fields of molecular biology, protein biochemistry and structural biology. In 2017, Luana joined Qkine as a Senior Protein Scientist, before progressing to the role of R&D lead in 2021. She designed and optimised purification procedures for growth factors, while managing workloads within the R&D team. Luana became the R&D Manager at Qkine in 2022, overseeing the strategic plan of the R&D pipeline.
David Cavanagh
David CavanaghManufacture and Operations Manager
David has gained more than 20 years of experience working within the biotechnology industry. He graduated from the University of Wolverhampton, U.K., with a degree in Biomedical Science before joining Cytomyx Ltd. In 2005, David moved to Abcam where he initially worked as a Development Scientist. He became In-House Manufacturing QC Team Leader/Interim Head of Cambridge Manufacturing at Abcam in 2010, managing multiple manufacturing pipelines of ~10,000 products. He was responsible for delivering in-house manufactured products to high quality standards whilst improving manufacturing process efficiency.
Dr Marko Hyvönen
Dr Marko HyvönenCSO & Founder
Marko is a structural biochemist with over 20 years of experience in producing complex proteins for structural analysis. He studied biochemistry at the University of Helsinki and did his PhD at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg. He joined the Department of Biochemistry in Cambridge in 1998. Since 2001 he has been leading a research group, studying the structure and function of TGF-beta family growth factors, with a particular focus on activins. He runs a core facility providing high-quality growth factors and other protein-based tools for the stem cell research consortium at the University of Cambridge.
Jim Warwick
Jim WarwickChair
Jim graduated from Christ’s College, Cambridge in 1986 and then joined Analysys Limited where he headed up their IT, software and web development initiatives. In 2000 he moved to Abcam as a Technical Director. He took over the operational management of the UK office as Managing Director in 2004, working on Abcam’s growth plans and efficiency improvement programmes. In 2009, Jim became Chief Operating Officer, with responsibility for overseeing the operational strategy of the Group. Jim left Abcam at the end of 2016 and is currently a NED for Cambridge Nutraceuticals Limited and the AIM listed Quartix Plc.