Our People

Dr. Haigh has more than 28 years of experience in drug discovery, clinical development, and commercialization in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. With over 20 years at the Board level in the UK, Europe, and the USA, Robert brings to the company a deep understanding of starting and leading a biotech business.

Robert was previously founder and CSO of Vantia Therapeutics after he led the spinout of small molecule assets from Ferring Pharmaceuticals where he was VP Research and CEO of the UK R&D site. Robert was also co-founder and COO of the NASDAQ-listed KalVista Pharmaceuticals.

Robert began his career in the pharma industry with Boehringer Ingelheim in Germany where he was a founder member of the Oncology Research Division and is a recent past CEO of Neuro-Bio. He currently serves as a non-executive director for Chain Biotechnology and Executive Chairman of Ikarovec. Robert holds an MSc in Biochemistry and a PhD, both from the University of Manchester.

Dr. Roper joined Epidarex as a Partner in 2013. She has more than 20 years of experience in the life science and healthcare industry, either as a venture investor or an operating executive. She has held senior operation roles and held various directorships including Chair.  She focuses on shaping and building early-stage life science opportunities into successful companies and investments.

Prior to joining Epidarex, Liz was Head of Business Development and part of the management team at Chroma Therapeutics Ltd., an Oxford-based venture-backed drug discovery and development company focused on inflammatory disorders and oncology. Liz led the establishment of several major company-building alliances including a multi‐target deal with GlaxoSmithKline around Chroma’s novel platform.

Liz is a former executive with the life science venture capital team at the Investments Division of The Wellcome Trust. She is also a former member of the life Science team at Atlas Ventures, London.

Liz currently serves on the Boards of Directors of AdoRx Ltd (Chair), Nodthera Ltd., Mironid Ltd., Caldan Therapeutics Ltd., Epidarex Exeed (Chair), EM Imaging Ltd, Macomics Ltd. and Dunad Therapeutics Ltd.

Liz holds a B.Sc. (Hons) in Biochemistry (1st class) from the University College Cork, and a Ph.D. from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund.

Dr. Dancer has over 30 years’ experience in Business Development across biotech, pharma and agrochemicals. She was Chief Business Officer at F-star, VP Business Development at Cellzome and Director, Business Development at MedImmune Ltd (formerly Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT)).  Jane spent the first part of her career in the agrochemical industry where she held research and project management roles in Aventis Crop Science, AgrEvo UK Ltd and Schering Agrochemicals Ltd.

Jane has an MBA from The Judge Institute of Management Studies, University of Cambridge and a PhD and a first degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge, UK. Jane is on the board of Spirea, PharmEnable and Chair of the Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust.

Dr. Wicher is an experienced drug developer. He was a Director of Research at Ossianix, a biotech start-up developing blood-brain barrier penetrant biologics, using a single domain shark antibody platform. He then served as a Director of Pharmacology and Translational Sciences at Kymab, supporting the preclinical development of immuno-oncology biologics. At MedImmune/AstraZeneca he was involved in creating novel biologics formats for treatment of autoimmune and other diseases. Krzysztof holds an MSc in Biotechnology from the Jagiellonski University in Kraków and a PhD from the University of Uppsala. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the London Research Institute, CRUK (now part of the Crick Institute),  and at the Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge.