Imophoron Senior Team
Paul Hole Ph.D – Head of Development
Paul’s role involves co-ordinating vaccine development pipelines and providing strategic support for development of the business and scientific programme. Paul joined the Imophoron team in April 2023.
Paul’s career began in academic research, starting with a final year project on mammalian genetics during his Natural Sciences degree at the University of Cambridge. Paul continued his academic research with a PhD at Cardiff University, focusing on understanding mechanisms of blood cancer development. From 2010-2018 during his postdoctoral positions, Paul was PI or Co-PI on grants totalling £2M+.
In 2018, Paul transitioned from academic to industrial research, as a Senior Scientist at ReNeuron Ltd. Over the subsequent 4 years prior to joining Imophoron, Paul was awarded 2 promotions, first to Principal Investigator and then to Programme Leader. Paul grew the research team from 2 to 8 scientists, and the Programme became the primary focus of ReNeuron’s pipeline. Paul’s team were responsible for delivering preclinical data on extracellular vesicle-based drug delivery vehicles. Paul has authored or co-authored 12 peer-reviewed publications both in industry and academia.
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Kapil Gupta - Senior Protein Scientist
Kapil is a highly skilled and experienced protein biochemist and structural biologist. He has more than 10 years’ experience in both producing recombinant proteins and conducting biochemical and structural analysis, for both academic and industrial purposes. Kapil obtained his PhD from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and has been working at the University of Bristol as a senior research associate. He is well versed in many cutting-edge technologies in the field of molecular biology, protein biochemistry, biophysics and structural biology.
Kapil has published more than 25 articles in the field including lead journals such as Science, Nature Communications, Nature structural and molecular biology, Nature methods and Cell Report. His extensive expertise in protein engineering, production and structural biology led him to discover a potential druggable pocket in the Spike protein of SARS-CoV2. He is an Indian national and currently resides in the United Kingdom.