Management
Mike Romanos PhD, Chief Executive
Mike Romanos is CEO of Crescendo. He has more than 20 years’ biotech and pharmaceutical industry experience, and within the last 10 years has held international executive positions in GlaxoSmithKline R&D before moving to take leadership of Crescendo Biologics. His industry and science experience covers most areas of drug discovery science and technology, and several therapeutic areas. During his career he has made significant contributions to GSK’s drug development pipeline, and broadly to drug discovery strategy and technology. He played a key role in establishing GSK’s advanced antibody lead discovery capability which generated the pipeline of in-house monoclonal antibodies, several of which are in clinical development.
Mike’s academic training started with a degree in Natural Sciences at Cambridge, followed by a PhD in Molecular Virology at Imperial College. He then undertook academic research on Virology at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research and in Yeast Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology at the Leicester Biocentre, before being recruited into the biotech arm of The Wellcome Foundation.
Amanda Bettison, Head of Business Operations
Amanda Bettison manages Crescendo’s business operations and its financial and legal affairs, and is Company Secretary to the Board. Amanda has worked closely with technology companies for the past 10 years, starting as a corporate finance researcher at Deloitte’s, before moving into venture capital at the Cambridge Gateway Fund. There she became responsible for all aspects of the Fund’s investor relations, financial reporting and regulatory compliance. In 2006 Amanda moved to Babraham, where she helped establish Aitua Limited, an early-stage investment vehicle for biotech spin-outs in Cambridge and throughout the UK. Amanda has been involved with Crescendo since the spin-out of its technologies from the Babraham Institute in 2008.
Amanda has a degree in German and Ancient Greek from the University of Birmingham, the EVCA Institute’s Finance Director Course and the UKSIP Investment Management Certificate.
Bryan Edwards PhD, Head of In Vitro Platforms
Bryan Edwards joined Crescendo in 2009 to lead and develop the company's in vitroantibody display platform, drawing on his expertise in the development and use of antibody library techniques (phage and ribosome display) for use in antibody discovery and optimisation. Bryan began his career at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, and then joined Cambridge Antibody Technology in 1996. During the next 13 years, until the recent merger with MedImmune to form the Biologics Division of AstraZeneca, he played a key role leading groups developing antibody library technologies and progressing projects. This work included management of a team established to deliver antibodies for the CAT collaboration with HGS, which resulted in many lead antibodies, including several in clinical development (BenLysta, HGS-ETR1 and HGS-ETR2).
Bryan has a degree in molecular biology from the University of Portsmouth and obtained his PhD in immunology at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology.
Brian McGuinness, Head of R&D Strategy and Operations
Brian McGuinness has been involved with Crescendo since its inception, working as a consultant. In January 2012, Brian joined the team full-time to manage Crescendo’s R&D strategy development and operations. Brian started his over 20-year career in biotechnology at Cambridge Antibody Technology, initially as a member of the team that developed the successful anti-TNF antibody Humira for CAT’s collaboration with BASF (Abbott). He subsequently moved into business development, evaluating new target, technology and product opportunities across the biologics portfolio of CAT and later AstraZeneca, co-ordinating a range of collaboration and licensing opportunities. In 2007 Brian began working as an independent consultant with early-stage companies, larger consultancies and investors, offering strategic expertise in biologics drug discovery, project management and due diligence. Other clients in addition to Crescendo included Heptares, Algeta, BerGenBio, Imperial Innovations, Apex Healthcare Consulting and Alacrita.
Brian has a degree in Microbiology from the University of Bristol, and completed his PhD in vaccine development at University of Southampton. He also holds an MBA from the Open University.
Matthew Roe, Chief Business Officer
Matthew Roe joined Crescendo as Chief Business Officer in 2011, to build business and corporate capability through deal-making, collaboration and partnerships. He has more than 25 years’ biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry experience, with the last 11 years spent in licensing and business development at Genzyme Corporation. His industry experience encompasses licensing, alliance management, acquisition and divestment, sales and marketing, and regulatory affairs. Most recently he negotiated and managed multiple agreements for Genzyme drug delivery technologies in the USA, Europe and Japan, and was a core team member for the divestment of Genzyme’s Pharmaceuticals business.
Matthew has a degree in biochemistry from Brunel University in London, and an MBA from the University of Warwick Business School.
Thomas Sandal, Head of Preclinical Development
Thomas joined Crescendo in February 2012 as Head of Preclinical Development, with a central role in the management of Crescendo’s therapeutic projects from lead discovery to the clinic and in building developability into the company’s products. Thomas brings more than 20 years’ biotech and pharmaceutical industry experience, specialising in CMC activities, but with experience across all the functions required for preclinical development (including product formats, routes of delivery, formulation, pharmacokinetics, production and toxicology) gained at Pieris, GSK, Domantis and Novo Nordisk.
Previously Thomas was VP of Bioprocess and CMC at Pieris, responsible for production and characterisation of anticailin products from lead discovery to the clinic. Previously he held key roles in GlaxoSmithKline’s Biopharm R&D Unit in CMC and was directly involved in GSK’s most advanced domain antibody (dAb) clinical project, for pulmonary delivery. Thomas joined GSK from Domantis where he was closely involved in all aspects of preclinical development and GMP manufacture of material for clinical trials.
In the earlier part of his career, Thomas was part of the initial team that founded CMC Biologics in Copenhagen, now one of the leading contract manufacturing organizations. He also held senior positions at Novozymes and Novo Nordisk. Thomas has an MSc in Chemical Engineering from The Technical University of Denmark and an Engineering Business Administration degree.
Yumin Teng PhD, Head of Molecular Biology
Yumin Teng joined Crescendo in the summer of 2010 to establish an in-house molecular biology division. Yumin has more than 10 years’ experience developing novel technologies and techniques exploiting yeast genome including artificial chromosomes (YACs) to study genome stability, first at the School of Biological Sciences at Swansea, and later at the School of Medicine at Cardiff University. Prior to this, he worked at the National Institute for the Control of Pharmaceutical and Biological Products in Beijing, establishing QC standards for biopharmaceutical products.
Yumin has a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Wales Swansea, an MSc in Analytical Chemistry from Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, China and took his BSc Chemistry at Jilin University, Changchun, China.
Joyce Young PhD, Head of Transgenic Platforms
Joyce Young joined Crescendo in 2010 to lead and develop the company’s in vivo platform for the production of humanised antibodies. Joyce has extensive expertise in basic immunology and antibody generation gained from academic research undertaken at Imperial Cancer Research Fund Labs, University of Cambridge, and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. A particular focus of this work was autoimmunity, tolerance and oncology. At the Sanger Institute Joyce worked with John McCafferty to develop phage display for high throughput antibody generation and genome-wide characterisation of protein function. Subsequently she joined MedImmune where she played a key role in establishing a capability for generating antibodies from conventional and transgenic mice, and generating leads for several projects.
Joyce has a degree in Immunology from the University of Glasgow and a PhD in autoimmunity/tolerance from the University of Bristol.