Our Team
o2h ventures team are leaders in the biotech community and have been actively involved as investors, holding various industry positions for over 20 years.
Sunil Shah
Managing Partner, Therapeutics
Sunil's Biography
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Sunil Shah
Managing Partner, Therapeutics
o2h Ventures was co-founded by Sunil and Prashant Shah in 2013. In the last 3-4 years, they have co-founded four companies with UK-based academics and entrepreneurs, provided consultancy services to five companies, held Chairman or Director level positions in nine companies, built up a portfolio of twenty early-stage investments, and executed early-stage drug discovery research projects for fifteen different companies. In 2013, bucking a pattern of UK Science going to the USA for funding, Sunil and Prashant acted quickly to lead an academic spin-out from the USA with promising data in brain cancer and proceeded to run, externally fund and locate that company, Opal Oncology, in the UK. It provided direct hands-on experience of making the scientific decisions and managing the operations of a therapeutics company.
Prashant Shah
Managing Partner, AI
Prashant's Biography
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Prashant Shah
Managing Partner, AI
o2h Ventures was co-founded by Sunil and Prashant Shah in 2013. In the last 3-4 years, they have co-founded four companies with UK-based academics and entrepreneurs, provided consultancy services to five companies, held Chairman or Director level positions in nine companies, built up a portfolio of twenty early-stage investments, and executed early-stage drug discovery research projects for fifteen different companies. In 2013, bucking a pattern of UK Science going to the USA for funding, Sunil and Prashant acted quickly to lead an academic spin out from the USA with promising data in brain cancer and proceeded to run, externally fund and locate that company, Opal Oncology, in the UK. It provided direct hands-on experience of making the scientific decisions and managing the operations of a therapeutics company.
Andy Morley
Principal
Andy's Biography
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Andy Morley
Principal
Andy is a Medicinal Chemist with over 25 yrs working in major pharma (Sano -Aventis, AZ). He has experience across all discovery phases, having supported five candidates into the clinic. He has authored and inventor of over 55 publications and patents. He is been working full-time with o2h Ventures since 2013 to lead the scientific evaluation of the investments and also provides scientific support on key projects within the portfolio. He is the CSO of Opal Oncology and had been CSO for two o2h early-stage collaborations.
Gary Pitts
Compliance Consultant, Tetractys Limited
Gary's Biography
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Gary Pitts
Compliance Consultant, Tetractys Limited
Gary Pitts MA(Oxon), MA(London), MBA, FInstLM, FCMI, ACSI is a senior compliance professional of 28 year's standing, a former regulator, Head of Compliance for hedge fund Brevan Howard, Head of Compliance for Europe, Mid-East, Africa and Japan for a boutique investment bank. He is a former director of regulated firms in the UK and South Africa and has been an FCA regulated person since 2001, as well as having fulfilled regulated roles in Ireland.
Gary is the founder of Tetractys Partners LLP based in London, a compliance consultancy set up in 2013 which acts for asset managers, hedge funds, brokers, fintechs and consumer credit firms, as well as delivering an extensive range of public and in-house technical training courses. He is also founder and CEO of Tetractys Ireland Limited, its Irish affiliate offering similar services to the Irish market.
Catherine Beech
Independent Representative to the Investment Advisory Panel
Catherine Beech Biography
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Catherine Beech
Independent Representative to the Investment Advisory Panel
Catherine has over 25 years
of experience in biotech,
pharmaceutical and as a venture
investor. She is currently the CEO
of Exonate for which she was one
of the founders leading the spin-
out from Nottingham University.
Catherine has a degree in medicine
from Birmingham University and in 2008 was awarded the OBE for services to technology and innovation.
Dr Chris Torrance
Independent Representative of the Investment Advisory Panel
Dr Chris Torrance Biography
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Dr Chris Torrance
Independent Representative of the Investment Advisory Panel
Chris is a cancer researcher and entrepreneur. In 2007 he founded Horizon Discovery to translate advances in human genome editing into a range of research tools and services to accelerate the discovery of new and improved ‘Personalized Medicines’, including the identi cation of novel drug targets for pharmaceutical development. By 2014 Chris and his colleagues had built Horizon into the fastest growing Biotech company in the UK. In the same year, the company listed on the London Stock Exchange with over 100 commercial and scienti c staff and signi cant deal- ow with the pharmaceutical Industry, for which Horizon received the Queens Award for International Trade in 2012. Chris completed his post-doctoral training in the laboratory of Professor Bert Vogelstein at the Johns Hopkins University (U.S.A).
Cengiz Tarhan
Independent Representative of the Investment Advisory Panel
Cengiz Tarhan Biography
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Cengiz Tarhan
Independent Representative of the Investment Advisory Panel
Cengiz set up FreeMedic PLC in
1993 which he grew over 25 years
and is now known as UCL Business
PLC, one of the most proli c and
successful technology groups in the
UK serving UCL and its associated
partner hospitals. Over those years
Cengiz was directly involved in
many licenses and spinouts including PolyMASC Pharmaceuticals PLC, one of the rst university spin-outs to oat on the London AIM in 1995, Medic to Medic Ltd which was sold to Informa PLC in 2005 and Stanmore Implants Worldwide Limited which was acquired by Abingworth
and MDY Healthcare in February 2008. More recently UCLB has been at the vanguard of creating the most promising cancer and gene therapy biotechs in the UK including three.
R G Boyle
Independent Representative of the Investment Advisory Panel
Robert's Biography
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R G Boyle
Independent Representative of the Investment Advisory Panel
R G Boyle is a founder and the CEO of Sentinel Oncology Ltd, a company dedicated towards the discovery of novel small molecules for the treatment of unmet medical needs. Robert is a medicinal chemist by background with over twenty-five years’ industrial experience. He has held positions at Pfizer (1993-1997); Cambridge Discovery Chemistry (1997-2000); Millennium Pharmaceuticals (200-2003); Astex Therapeutics (2003-2005) & Sentinel Oncology (2005-present). As CEO & founder of Sentinel Oncology, he has successfully raised multiple rounds of funding, built a pipeline of small molecule drug assets and secured multiple licensing deals with Biotech and Pharma. Sentinel has been the recipient of numerous awards & grants for innovation and Robert is a named inventor on over 50 patents & publications describing the discovery and use of small molecules for the treatment of unmet medical needs.
W. Graham Richards
Independent Representative of the Investment Advisory Panel
W. Graham Richards Biography
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W. Graham Richards
Independent Representative of the Investment Advisory Panel
Graham served as Chairman of
the Department of Chemistry at
Oxford University. Throughout his
career, he has been involved in the
commercialisation of technologies
where he was a director of the
University of Oxford’s technology
transfer company. He was also
involved with the Wellcome Trust in a similar capacity. He co-founded Oxford Molecular Group plc., InhibOx Ltd. and Oxford Drug Design Ltd. He was a main board director, now venture partner, of IP Group plc., the listed intellectual property commercialisation company.
David Barrett
Senior Venture Partner
David's Biography
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David Barrett
Senior Venture Partner
David has spent most of his career working in Japan with Astellas and the predecessor company, Fujisawa. He is a senior-level leader and drug hunter with extensive expertise in infectious diseases and oncology, project management and has a track record of delivering quality, differentiated development candidates to the pipeline and market. In recent years, he has developed extensive management and leadership experience within Astellas with a focus on scientific excellence, effective global cross-functional interactions, leadership, responsibility, productivity, mentorship and influence. David has extensive experience working with internal and external research programs, Divisional governance, decision-making and reporting processes and interactions with domestic/overseas affiliates and partners, including CROs to help drive creation of innovative product candidates.
David received his Ph.D. degree in synthetic organic chemistry from Newcastle University in the UK and carried out postdoctoral research at Stanford University in the laboratory of Professor Barry M.Trost.
Chris Reid
Venture Partner
Chris's Biography
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Chris Reid
Venture Partner
Chris Reid worked in the City for 17 years as a successful equity research analyst and a fund manager. Amongst other achievements, he built a UK Income fund from scratch to be one of the best performing funds in the sector (150% total return in six years) with over £1bn AUM. Prior to joining the City, he spent 6 years as a Technology Consultant at PA Consultants, focusing on evaluation and support of new products and businesses. He has first-hand experience of over 200 businesses in all industries from mining to high-technology manufacturing across the UK, US and Europe and a deep understanding of the financial, strategic and operational factors that must all come together to ensure a successful, financially rewarding investment. He has a Cambridge MA in Natural Sciences (Materials Science) and an MBA from London Business School.
Dr Nigel Pitchford
Venture Partner
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Dr Nigel Pitchford
Venture Partner
Nigel is the CEO of Ieso Digital Health Limited - the world leading digital health company specialising in evidence-based online Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Prior to joining Ieso he was the Chief Investment Officer for Touchstone Innovations plc and was responsible for all of the Group's investment activities, which were concentrated on UK-based start-ups in the Healthcare and Technology sectors. During his tenure, the active venture portfolio grew to some 50 companies with corresponding value growth in excess of £350m. Previously he had been a partner at DFJ Esprit and 3i and was an active investor across Europe and the US. His previous investments include Domantis (sold to GSK), Arakis (sold to Sosei Pharma), Apatech (sold to Baxter), Endosense (sold to St Jude), EUSA Pharma (sold to Jazz), Horizon Discovery (AIM: HZD) and Oxford Immunotec (NASDAQ: OXFD).
Jeff Roix
Venture Partner
Jeff's Biography
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Jeff Roix
Venture Partner
Jeff is a scientist and biotech entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in discovering medicines. Most recently, he was founder and CEO of NeoPhore Ltd, a UK cancer immunotherapy biotech making small-molecule drugs in DNA damage repair. Prior to that, he worked as COO to establish PhoreMost, a Cambridge University spinout company making therapeutics for “undruggable” targets across many diseases.
Jeff’s longer experience in translational and early drug discovery spans US organisations across venture, biotech, pharma and academic science. Jeff obtained his bachelors from the Harvard Extension School, with further training and expertise in the genetics and cell biology of cancer, diabetes and metabolic disease.
Gayathri Sadasivam
Head of Biology
Gayathri's Biography
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Gayathri Sadasivam
Head of Biology
Gayathri leads the biology capabilities in Ahmedabad, India and Cambridge, UK. She also significantly contributes to the business development with the o2h customers world-wide, understanding the market requirements, contributing to technology transfer and investment evaluations. Prior to this, she has worked for >15 years in different therapeutic areas in both industry and academia. She has led multiple programs in drug discovery projects through lead optimization to candidate selection and further development to late stage clinical trials. She has worked in a multi-disciplinary environment, leading chemical biology efforts creating chemical tools that modulate novel class of “undruggable” targets. Gayathri has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the Brain Research Institute, Zurich, Switzerland.
Riddhi Ahuja
Fund Administrator
Riddhi's Biography
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Riddhi Ahuja
Fund Administrator
Riddhi is the fund administrator at o2h Ventures and also the EA to CEO. As a fund administrator, she is responsible for end to end administration of the fund and acts as a key point of contact for fund related matters. She also organizes and manages the deal flow that comes in from prospective investee companies.
She has over 5 years of experience as an Operations and International Business Manager in a reputed manufacturing firm. Having worked in a versatile environment, she has developed different working skill sets from Business Administration, Marketing, Finance to International Business Management. Riddhi has a bachelor's degree in Business Administration from ICFAI university.
Ajit Singh Guller
Marketing Manager
Ajit's Biography
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Ajit Singh Guller
Marketing Manager
As o2h Group’s Marketing Manager, Ajit leads a team of bright marketing professionals focused on strengthening the o2h group brand in the industry and spotting business growth opportunities. Ajit is responsible for brand marketing, advertising and research, content and digital marketing, business analytics, PR and communications.
Prior to joining o2h Group, Ajit worked as a digital marketer for two SME tech companies with global client bases and a seed stage ecommerce startup. He is an experienced professional with an eye for design, user experience and behaviour, and digital analytics.
Prior to joining o2h Group, Ajit worked as a digital marketer for two SME tech companies with global client bases and a seed stage ecommerce startup. He is an experienced professional with an eye for design, user experience and behaviour, and digital analytics.
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