Dr Rosalind Hannen (Founder and CEO of Keratify) will present her bench to industry journey explaining how she took her research on dermatology to market.
Date: Tuesday 28 November, 3pmLocation: Online | Register About the seminar
The next Entrepreneurs Club will host Dr Rosalind Hannen on 28 November at 3pm. Rosalind is the CEO and founder of the multi-award winning bioengineering company Keratify which has developed a skin R&D testing platform. Human skin is a complex tissue, the study of which has been thwarted by the technical difficulties of maintaining tissue viability in an R&D setting. This has resulted in stalled development of new skin formulations over the last decade, but with Keratify’s innovations, this stands to change. With over 50% of the world’s population suffering from some form of skin condition, and big pharma companies such as Bayer dropping their dermatology focused pipelines, Keratify’s transformation of the pre-clinical skin testing space is poised to have significant and widespread patient/consumer benefits.It was during Rosalind’s academic research that she saw the limitations of current skin models, which are particularly poor at recreating healthy skin due to rapid deterioration. To address this, Rosalind and the Keratify team have applied their expertise to create cutting edge technologies, including the OneVivo skin culture device, able to more accurately recreate the skin’s environment resulting in more biologically relevant testing. This is a fantastic talk to join if you are interested in translating your research into an R&D application, particularly if you are in the life sciences space. About the speaker
Rosalind undertook her BBSRC-Unilever PhD studentship at the Blizard Institute in dermatoendocrinology and following that, tenaciously supported her postdoctoral research through her own grant applications. She won the British Skin Foundation grant award in 2016 to further her research in psoriasis and was awarded a MedCity grant (2017, the highest ranked grant) with Fourth State Medicine to assess the effectiveness of plasma technology for chronic wound healing. In 2018, she won a place on the MedTech SuperConnector programme and a QMUL Life Sciences Initiative award to accelerate the commercial development of a novel skin testing platform. These funds provided essential capital towards the founding of Keratify in 2018. Keratify then won an Innovate UK Smart grant and Continuity grant to accelerate the development of their preclinical skin testing technology. They now work with some of the largest corporations in the world to improve confidence in bench-to-clinic transition for dermatology R&D.
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The Entrepreneurs Club:
The Entrepreneurs Club provides a platform for sharing experiences, exchanging ideas, and learning from one another’s successes. We are keen to bring in different perspectives on entrepreneurship and inspire our colleagues with the many opportunities’ entrepreneurship can create for them, particularly those who may not consider this pathway yet. We encourage you to bring your questions, experiences, and an open mind to engage in a dynamic and thought-provoking discussion. Whether you are just starting out or have already established a successful business the Entrepreneurs Club offers valuable insights and fresh perspectives that will benefit all attendees. The Entrepreneurs Club is chaired by Professor Dr Andrew Livingston, Vice Principal for Research and Innovation who is committed to foster and nurture Queen Mary's entrepreneurial ecosystem.