Leadership team
Catherine co-founded Qkine in 2016, whilst completing a Daphne Jackson fellowship at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. Previously 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. Following a career break, she returned to academic research in 2015 as a Daphne Jackson fellow.
As co-founder of Qkine, Catherine is committed to improving protein production, quality and reliability to develop 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.
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.
Luana joined Qkine in 2017 as a Senior Protein Scientist, before progressing to the role of R&D lead in 2021. She designed and optimized purification procedures for growth factors, while managing workloads within the R&D team. She became the R&D Manager at Qkine in 2022, overseeing the strategic plan of the R&D pipeline.
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.
Andy joined Qkine in 2022 to expand both the manufacturing and product development capabilities within the company and to ensure the continuous supply of high-quality reagents to customers whilst meeting future demands.
David has 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.
Rob has over 15 years sales and sales leadership experience, managing successful commercial teams in life science organisations, across a spectrum of start-ups and public listed companies. Rob has recently worked at Fujifilm Irvine Scientific in the field of cell therapy, building a sales team in Europe focused on cell culture media, buffers and customised solutions for CAR-T, MSC and NK cell therapy manufacturing, helping to drive customers process development through their different clinical trial phases. He spent a year at Core Biogenesis, a start-up where he helped find product-market fit for novel plant-based growth factors and proteins for cell therapy and cultivated meat applications and develop the business.
Rob rejoined Qkine in July 2024 as part of the executive team to execute and deliver the commercial strategy to scale the business.
Paul is a seasoned finance leader with more than 25 years in senior finance positions. A qualified ACMA he has experience across a number of companies within the life science and high-tech manufacturing sectors, from UK start-ups to publicly listed US companies. He has worked in several scale-up environments at a strategic and operational level, most recently with bit.bio where he helped grow the company from 30 to over 200 employees, creating a robust financial infrastructure to support the business. This included the implementation of a NetSuite ERP system, an effective FP&A function and public-market level controls and processes.
Paul joined Qkine in July 2024 as part of the executive team to provide strategic, financial and operational leadership, support fundraising activities and provide insights to the Board and investors.
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 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 programs. 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.
