Who we are

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 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 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.

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.

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.