Triple triumph as Mursla strengthens advisory board
Mursla, a Cambridge-based liquid biopsy company that has just entered the 2021-2022 Business Weekly Awards, has demonstrated its potential with a string of high-profile hires for its Advisory Board.
The new dignitaries are Professor Bernd Giebel, Dr Daniel Delubac and Professor Emmanuel Rautou.
The company is tilting at three accolades in the Business Weekly Awards – Young Company of the Year, Life Science Scale-Up and Disruptive Technology.
Professor Giebel is Professor at the University Duisburg-Essen. Highly experienced in the phenotypic characterisation of rare cells, (hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells), Bernd introduced Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis (NTA) to the scientific community as a quantification and size-measuring method for extracellular vesicles (EV)/exosomes in 2011.
In the same year he was also involved in the world’s first human stem-cell derived EV administration. His group also established imaging flow cytometry (IFCM) for single EV characterisation, in complex samples.
To date, Bernd has over 100 publications, the majority focused on EVs/exosomes. He is an active member of the International Society of Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV), having coordinated several ISEV’s positioning papers on the therapeutic application of EVs/exosomes.
He is the co-chair of the exosome-committee of the International Society of Cell and Gene Therapy (ISCT) and the president of the German Society of Extracellular Vesicles (GSEV), which he founded together with other German EV experts in 2017. In 2021, Bernd founded Exosla, an exosome therapeutics company. He used to sit on the scientific advisory board of EVOX Therapeutics.
Dr Delubac is COO at Xilis. A seasoned leader, manager and engineer specialised in biotechnology with experience spanning clinical diagnostics research, product development and lab operations, as well as synthetic biology, Daniel has significant experience working with liquid biopsy companies.
Having started his career at Counsyl, where he built the first fully automated, blood-to-data, robotic system for clinical-grade Next Generation Sequencing, he then joined liquid biopsy company Guardant Health, where he supervised both process engineering at the company level and automation for sample processing.
Subsequently, at Freenome, another liquid biopsy biotech, he led execution on wet lab R & D, process engineering, automation, laboratory operations and supply chain, building next generation products for the unbiased discovery of cancer biomarkers using robotics and AI.
Professor Rautou is a clinical specialist in Hepatology with a PhD in vascular biology. He also has a particular interest in exosomes and having undertaken research in this area has published a number of original and review papers on the subject.
Currently Professor of Hepatology at the University of Paris and Hôpital Beaujon, Clichy, France (since 2016) and head of the splanchnic hemodynamic laboratory at Beaujon Hospital, Clichy, France (since 2012), Pierre-Emmanuel is also leading an Inserm team dedicated to the study of the role of vessels in liver diseases, at the Paris Research Center for Inflammation.
His research is focused on the role of vessels in liver diseases. Specifically, he is interested in primary vascular liver diseases (Budd-Chiari syndrome, portal vein thrombosis and intrahepatic non cirrhotic portal hypertension), as well as in vascular involvement in common liver diseases development and complications.
Pierre Arsène, founder and CEO at Mursla said: “Professors Giebel, Rautou and Dr Delubac are significant opinion leaders in their fields; we feel privileged to have them on board and look forward to benefiting from their expertise and experience.
“Ultimately, I hope that their input will bring us one step closer to our objective of getting Mursla’s novel exosome-based lab test into the clinic.”
• To enter the Business Weekly Awards visit https://www.businessweekly.co.uk/business-awards/enter-awards or email Tony Quested – tquested@businessweekly.co.uk
