Board of Directors
Hans Schikan
Non-Executive Chairman
Hans Schikan
Non-Executive Chairman
Hans Schikan is the Non-Executive Chairman of Microbiotica. He has decades of commercial, development, transactional as well as leadership experience from the biopharma industry. Hans is a well-established biopharma leader, having held many board memberships for both private and publicly listed companies throughout his career. He currently serves on the boards of Pharvaris NV, Vicore Pharma AB and Organon (Netherlands). He is also Top Team member of the Dutch Top Sector Life Sciences and Health.
Previously Hans served as Chief Executive Officer of Prosensa where he led the Company’s $90 million IPO on NASDAQ, before successfully completing the Company’s up to $840 million acquisition by BioMarin. Prior to his time at Prosensa, Hans was at Genzyme, where he served as Vice President Global Marketing and Strategic Development. Before joining Genzyme, he spent 17 years at Organon, both at corporate level and in country operations which included assignments in Asia and Europe. He holds a PharmD degree from the University of Utrecht.
Tim Sharpington
CEO
Tim Sharpington
CEO
Tim Sharpington is Chief Executive Officer of Microbiotica. He has established a track record of leading, developing and executing company strategy, with experience in product development, fundraising, M&A and licensing.
Tim brings over 30 years’ experience in leadership roles in pharma, biotech and CROs across Europe and the US. Prior companies include Vectura; Arakis , where Tim led the development of AD237 before its successful out license to Novartis; ICON and Sequus, where he led the development of DOXIL, an oncology product which was granted accelerated approval for ovarian cancer. His most recent role was COO of Open Orphan (formerly hVIVO) from 2018-2020.
Tim started his career as a postgraduate researcher at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine before working as Clinical Programme Manager at Pfizer. He has previously held Non-Executive Director positions at Ixico and Clinical Force.
Carmine Circelli
Investor Director
Carmine Circelli
Investor Director
Carmine Circelli is British Patient Capital’s Investor Director for Microbiotica and is also Director of Direct Life Science Investments at British Patient Capital, the commercial subsidiary of the British Business Bank, the UK government’s economic development bank.
Carmine has more than seven years of investment experience in the life sciences and software sectors from early to late stage. He also has experience in drug development, scientific sales and patent commercialisation.
Carmine holds a BSc in Pharmacology and a PhD in Cardiovascular Medicine from the University of Manchester.
Mark Quick
Investor Director
Mark Quick
Investor Director
Mark Quick is Flerie Invest AB’s Investor Director for Microbiotica and is a also a partner in Flerie which invests in venture and growth stage companies engaged in drug development and associated tools or applications tackling major medical challenges.
Prior to Flerie, Mark spent 16 years with the top five global CDMO, Recipharm, leading its M&A activity and completing some 25 transactions over this time. He was also a member of the Executive Committee. Before that he spent time at ICI, Medeva, Celltech and UCB in various business development and supply chain roles. He also has an MBA.
Robert Tansley
Investor Director
Robert Tansley
Investor Director
Robert Tansley is Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC) plc’s Investor Director for Microbiotica and is also an Investment Director with Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC), focussed on healthcare and associated technologies; a post he has held since 2014.
After seven years working in hospital medicine, Robert joined the pharma industry in 1996 working in development and regulatory roles at Sanofi, the MHRA and Roche. Before joining CIC Robert spent 10 years in senior management roles in a number of start-up companies, including Arakis and KalVista; he founded the malaria-focused company Treague and was founding CEO of the University of Copenhagen spin-out Avilex Pharma.
Robert qualified in medicine from University College London. He is a member of the Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists and the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine, and has an MBA from London Business School and an MPhil in Biostatistics from the University of Cambridge.
Sam Williams
Investor Director
Sam Williams
Investor Director
Sam Williams is IP Group’s Investor Director. Sam has 20 years’ experience in the biotechnology industry, both as a top-ranked equity analyst in the City and, subsequently, as an entrepreneur and Chief Executive.
Sam is Executive Chairman of Istesso Limited, a Non-Executive Director of Diurnal Group plc and Managing Partner, Life Sciences, at IP Group. He holds a PhD in molecular biology from Cambridge and a degree in Biology from Oxford.
Trevor Lawley
Co-founder and CSO
Trevor Lawley
Co-founder and CSO
Trevor Lawley is a co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Microbiotica. He is also Faculty Group Leader of the Host-Microbiota Interactions Team at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (WTSI), where his research uses advanced metagenomic sequencing and deep culturing to investigate the microbial communities contained on and within host organisms that are associated with health and a range of diseases and syndromes such as infections, autoimmunity, irritable bowel syndromes and cancer. He has pioneered many aspects of the bacteriotherapy concept where defined mixtures of bacteria are used to cure intestinal diseases linked to pathological imbalances in the intestinal microbiota.
Trevor began his research at WTSI in 2007 as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Microbial Pathogenesis group, having received a Royal Society Fellowship to start a new research programme in C. difficile epidemiology and pathogenesis. During this time, he has worked with a global consortium from over 25 institutes to assemble a comprehensive C. difficile culture collection, now housed within the Sanger Institute.
Prior to joining WTSI, Trevor held a Canadian Institutes of Health Research post-doctoral fellowship, working in the Laboratory of Professor Stanley Falkow and Dr Denise Monack at Stanford University, USA, where he studied the impact of antibiotic treatment on Salmonella disease and transmission.
Trevor gained his first degree from Acadia University, Canada and his PhD from the University of Alberta, Canada, where he pioneered the use of genomics to study the origins and spread of antibiotic resistance in infectious diseases. He received the Canadian Society of Microbiologists Graduate Student of the Year Award for this work. More recently, Trevor was recognised by the Peggy Lillis Foundation with their Innovator Award 2015 for his ground-breaking work on developing bacteriotherapy for C. difficile infections.
