Our people, partners and investors

Didier Landais brings over 30 years of broad international experience in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries as an executive leader in research and development, project management, GMP manufacturing, and business development.

Didier started as a Research Scientist and then Project Leader in Oncology at Rhône-Poulenc Rorer's Gene Therapy Division, RPR-Gencell, in Vitry, France now known as Sanofi. After his MBA, Didier was Senior Director of Business Development at IDM-Pharma and then served as General Manager Cell Therapy where he led the international development of a cancer vaccine product including clinical trials in the US and Europe and oversaw IDM-Pharma's alliance with Sanofi-Aventis. He also has served as Chief Development Officer at Biotechnol, as the CEO of Alfact Innovation. He has been an Independent Consultant to the biopharma and life science research market where Baylor Research Institute, Avesthagen, ImmuPharma, the Carolina Healthcare System and Genome Profiling, LLC (as CBO) were among his clients. Then, Didier was The Global Head of Licensing at Servier. Under his leadership, Servier signed several notable deals including those with Celsius, Oncodesign and Seal Rock. After this, he was the COO and CBO of Labgenius Ltd in London. Most recently, he is the CBO of Aptarion Biotech AG.

Didier Landais graduated with a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology at University Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France, followed by a post-doctoral internship at UCLA (USA) in Medical Genetic Training Program and an Executive MBA at ESSEC, Paris.

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Jo is a respected life sciences Non-Exec Chair, NED, CEO, investor and NIHR Programme Director for innovation funding. She has over 25 years’ experience building and supporting companies in the sector, most recently as an investor with BGF’s early-stage life sciences portfolio. Jo has a portfolio of independent and VC-backed board roles for SMEs, currently as Non-Executive Chair of Silvia Bio and NED for Ignota Labs and Entia.  Jo is also Chair and co-founder of a cell therapy spin-out from the Frances Crick Institute in London and Programme Director for the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) i4i programme.

Prior to BGF, Jo was NXC and Exec Chair of Oxford Cancer Biomarkers, a commercial stage cancer diagnostics business, and was previously CEO of UK female health medtech Verso Biosense, building the company from academic start-up to clinical-stage SME. She has led licensing, M&A and fundraising both as operator and adviser for public and private life sciences companies in the UK and US and is a Senior Adviser to Moore Walker Partners’ corporate finance team.

Max Herrmann has over 30 years of experience in the life sciences industry both as a finance executive and financial markets analyst and more recently as a non-executive director. During his career he has helped raise over US$1bn for biotech and medtech companies. In addition to his role as non-executive director of Ignota Labs Ltd, he is also currently a non-executive director of Oppilotech Ltd, a UK-based biotech company employing its proprietary predictive computational modelling platform to aid drug target selection.

Prior to these roles Max spent over a decade at the US investment bank Stifel as Managing Director where he headed a highly rated equity research team and where he led the IPO research of numerous healthcare companies including Amryt Pharma (sold to Chiesi for $1.5bn), Calliditas (sold to Asahi Kasei for $1.1bn), Ergomed (sold to Permira for $0.9bn), Genincode (AIM listed), Nanoform (Finish/Swedish listed) and Oxford BioDynamics (AIM listed). He has also been CFO of two AIM listed healthcare companies, Intercytex Group plc and Silence Therapeutics plc (now listed on Nasdaq) as well as the private biotech company ReViral Ltd (sold to Pfizer for $425m). Max qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Arthur Andersen in 1993. He has a BSc. in Microbiology from the University of Kent.

Melanie is a seasoned Executive and Non-Executive Director across Pharma and Medtech companies, including FTSE 100 biotech, large public and small venture backed boards. She has a strong background in corporate development of strategy in public and private companies to their next phase of growth and is widely connected across the global healthcare sector. Melanie is pursuing a portfolio career in life sciences focused on new technologies and innovation to transform the opportunities for human health and wellbeing.

Melanie is passionate about people development and in particular encouraging women to succeed as leaders and as Executives. She has always encouraged personal development and has provided support to young people, middle managers and new C-suite executives, to keep learning and honing their leadership skills.

Melanie held Executive Director of R&D for global pharma and medtech companies. She also was Chief Executive Officer of three organisations. Two venture backed Biotech companies and LifeArc
which she transformed into a £1.8bn charity focused on translation of science into therapeutic and medtech products to enhance patient selection and wellbeing.

Melanie has a strong capability in corporate strategy and financial acuity and is passionate about translation in life sciences. Throughout her career she has focused on driving and leading change to embrace technologies into pathways to product success for human health. She held NED and Executive board positions since joining Celltech (a FTSE 100 Board) in 1998 and is very familiar with Boards of all types, (Lundbeck, Sanofi S.A., Celltech plc and BTG plc being amongst them).

Melanie’s most recent NED appointment is with privately owned, Portuguese based Bial in 2023. Her founding Trustee role with Dementia Research UK will conclude at the end of 2026.

Peter Newham is a senior pharmaceutical safety science leader with three decades of drug discovery and development experience at AstraZeneca, retiring in 2024 after a career spanning multiple therapeutic
areas and drug safety disciplines.

Most recently, Peter served as Vice-President of Safety Sciences within Clinical Pharmacology and Safety Sciences, R&D, where his global organisation of scientists was accountable for the non-clinical safety dimension of AstraZeneca's entire R&D and approved medicine portfolio. This organisation spanned Cambridge (UK), Gothenburg (Sweden), and Gaithersburg and Waltham (US), delivering discovery-phase safety, safety innovation, investigative toxicology, non-clinical regulatory safety, genetic toxicology, reproductive toxicology and safety pharmacology across a broad range of drug modalities.

Earlier leadership roles at AstraZeneca included Vice-President, Oncology Safety; Global Head of Oncology Safety within Drug Safety & Metabolism, IMED Biotech Unit; and Global Head of Discovery Safety, where he led a multidisciplinary team of approximately 50 scientists spanning discovery toxicology, computational safety, genetic toxicology and secondary pharmacology.

Peter is a recognised thought leader in investigative and translational toxicology, having co-authored several influential, cross-industry review articles shaping the field, including Nature Reviews Drug Discovery publications. He brings deep, cross-modality expertise in non-clinical and translational drug safety, toxicology, and the application of novel technologies for the de-risking of novel drug candidates, developed across all stages of pharmaceutical research and development.

Peter holds a degree in Biochemistry (Hons.) and a PhD from the University of Manchester.

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Dr. Angeliki Kotsianti, MD, PhD, joins the Ignota Labs Scientific Advisory Board bringing a rare combination of pioneering work in artificial intelligence for medicine and senior pharmaceutical leadership at global scale. She was among the earliest to apply machine learning to clinical oncology, developing systems pathology for patient stratification years before AI in drug discovery had a name. She is a named inventor on eight foundational systems pathology patents, and her research has been cited approximately 1,300 times.

For nearly two decades at Pfizer, she served most notably as Senior Medical Authority and Benefit-Risk Committee Chair for the entire commercial portfolio, overseeing more than 800 established medicines across US, EU, UK, and global markets, with 100+ submissions to global regulatory agencies including FDA, EMA, MHRA, and Health Canada. She led the clinical revival of a life-saving hematological medicine, built the medical governance framework for Pfizer's pandemic response, and led enterprise strategy for global carcinogenic-impurity remediation. Each decision turned on the question Ignota now faces: whether a molecule can be brought safely back to patients.

She serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of Synion Biotherapeutics, co-founded Oncolyze, and counsels private equity and law firms on medical and scientific strategy in biotech. Her earlier career included senior research roles at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. She received her MD from the Democritus University of Thrace and her Pathology residency and PhD in Molecular Pathology from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.