Our team, our culture

Our story began when Prof. Ludovic Vallier founded DefiniGEN in the labs at the University of Cambridge. We still work closely with the University and other academic institutions. We're proud of our background which continues to guide us, as we still approach each project with the same rigor that has driven us from humble beginnings to the successful position we are in today.

 

Our unique approach means we're not an off-the-shelf company. The way we partner with our clients allows us to integrate seamlessly into their development pipeline, providing a de-risked and unique approach to the provision of bioassay services in the liver disease space. We understand each of our clients has unique drug and disease modelling requirements and we approach each project with a customized method that suits their needs.

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Our purpose

Our purpose is to improve and save lives by accelerating the development of treatments for life-threatening conditions. We do this by providing highly predictive cell-based models of liver disease to the drug development industry.

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Our goal

Our goal is to develop innovative solutions that enable the cure of liver diseases through predictive in vitro modelling. We've developed a proprietary platform technology that allows us to create disease models and bioassays that support the development of next-generation therapies for our clients.

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Our models

Our models reduce the chance of clinical failure and decrease the number of animals used in safety assessment. We’re striving to create a better future for all by helping to bring life-saving therapies to patients faster and more effectively than ever before.

Meet the Team

Our team is made up of both leading academics and commercially astute professionals.

Chris Kirton

Chief Executive Officer

Chris Kirton CEO
Chris Kirton

Chief Executive Officer

Chris Kirton is a senior leader with many years of experience in both industry and academia. Chris began his operational management career by establishing and growing the Cell Biology and Immunology business unit at a global CRO from a small local team to an international business, offering a full range of GxP services with multi-million-pound revenues. Chris then went on to collaborate with Ludovic Vallier to establish the world’s largest stem cell core facility at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, which delivered the HiPSCi iPSC banking project. He then joined Axol Bioscience as their COO where leading a raft of business transformation and scale-up projects before joining DefiniGEN as first COO and more recently as CEO. Chris is passionate about leadership, team building, and staff development, and has trained as a leader with the Judge Business School and is qualified as a mentor and coach. In his spare time, Chris is a cub scout leader and also runs a community cinema.

Celine Gomez

Director Operations

Celine Gomez Ops Director
Celine Gomez

Director Operations

Celine gained her PhD in Developmental Biology and Molecular Genetics from the University Paris VI, France. She conducted her PhD research at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, USA, before joining the University of Cambridge, UK, as a post-doctoral Fellow in the field of Skin Stem Cell Biology. Her atypical work on snake embryos led to a first author publication in Nature and she was later awarded the Human Frontier Science Program Long-Term Fellowship. Moving toward applied science, Celine got hired at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the Core Facility CGaP where she successfully led several large-scale projects consisting of reprogramming hundreds of healthy and diseased primary human samples into induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSC), differentiating them into various lineages and running screening assays. Over the years, Celine has built comprehensive experience in delivering complex projects and solving wide-ranging challenges. She has a keen interest in building highly performing teams while solving complex scientific issues.

Heidi Kingdon Jones

Chief Business Officer

Heidi Kingdon Jones, CBO
Heidi Kingdon Jones

Chief Business Officer

Heidi spent the last 15 years in senior commercial leadership roles for both large and small contract research organisations. Prior to this she worked for big pharma in both business development and clinical development roles. She has built global sales and marketing teams, formulated and implemented commercial strategies to transform small businesses into global players. Heidi is passionate about innovation particularly for pharmaceutical research and development that result in more effective medicines being brought to patients faster.
Prof. Ludovic Vallier

Chief Scientific Officer

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Prof. Ludovic Vallier

Chief Scientific Officer

Ludovic is a DefiniGEN founder and he directs the development of our proprietary technology platform OptiDIFF. The platform integrates the reprogramming of patient sample to generate iPSC, CRISPR-mediated generation of disease and isogenic iPSC lines, and their optimized differentiation to produce metabolic disease cell models. Ludovic has advanced the state of the art regarding the use of iPSC as an in vitro model of development through research undertaken at the University of Cambridge in his role as Professor of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cells. Ludovic has also published multiple high impact factor articles on iPSCs for modelling liver diseases and cell-based therapy applications and he is Director of the Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre hIPSCs core facility.

Shaun Chilton

Chairman

Shaun Chilton
Shaun Chilton

Chairman

With an entrepreneurial spirit and a results-driven approach, Shaun brings 30 years of extensive experience as a Chair, CEO and advisor. Shaun has expertly led and managed both listed and unlisted portfolios, spanning from niche regional businesses to multi-divisional global platform companies. Shaun possesses an impressive track record of consistently delivering strong growth in enterprise value with businesses ranging from low single-digit £m profit through to £120m. Shaun is highly skilled at developing high quality business strategies, managing change and transforming businesses with an entrepreneurial vision.
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