At Helico, our processes and decisions are guided by three main principles. Our work is driven by the goal of accessibility where everything we do is ultimately to make life-saving therapeutics more accessible globally. Innovation is a key - by building upon current techniques we developed an alternative way to manufacture biologics quicker to deliver proof-of-concept. We consider the environmental impact of our operations, pursuing a carbon neutral manufacturing process to reduce total pollutant emissions of the pharmaceutical industry.
We are a multidisciplinary team with expertise in plant biology & physiology, molecular biology, biochemistry, as well as in computational biology, bioinformatics, and computer science. Our core members also have knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry.
Ilya is the co-founder and CEO of Helico. Coming from a corporate innovation and entrepreneurship background, Ilya has helped some of the world's most progressive companies, such as Abbot Health, General Motors and the Environmental Protection Agency, deliver future-proof solutions. Ilya’s aspiration is to create business models that make technology available to the widest possible audience and contribute in socially responsible ways. Ilya received his undergraduate degree from Brandeis University and Masters in Commercialization and Entrepreneurship (MCE) from the University of Auckland.
Startup experience | Management | Commercialisation | BA/MCE
Xiaoming is a cofounder of Helico and the software engineer that leads the development of our bioinformatics software platform. With a PhD in bioengineering, he’s deeply passionate about exploring virtual systems in the computational life sciences and building an ever-expanding range of computational workflows to simulate the production of drugs in plants.
Bioengineering | Data Engineering | Algorithm Design | PhD
Coline is the VP technology and operation at Helico. Coline is responsible for the operational activities and science project management of the company, with a strong emphasis on laboratory deployment, H&S and quality. She backs this up with expertise on patents and BD for biotechnology start-ups. Coline has a master's degree in pharmacology and biotechnology, a PhD in plant biochemistry (biofuel) and 5 years of experience in Europe, working as a scientist, project manager and BD in CROs in the pharmaceutical industry.
Biotechnology | Synthetic Biology | CRO commercialisation | PhD
Miguel is the CSO at Helico. With +30 years of experience in plant biotechnology research he brings strong expertise in the R&D and product development at Helico. He has extensive experience in the optimisation of plant models for the production of recombinant proteins, from tuberculosis proteins to interleukin and antibodies. He also has long experience generating VLP for vaccine –plant-produced applications. Additionally, his innovative ideas to increase yield for the production of therapeutic proteins in plants are highly influencing Helico’s computational platform. Miguel has a phD in plant science from the University of Edinburgh and a strong academic career at the university of Mexico where he is author of over 100 publications in main scientific journals.
Plant Biotechnology - Protein expression - VLP expert - PhD
Wayman is a co-founder of Helico and an advisor for science research and lab methods. Wayman joined Helico with a vision that plants should be the platform to produce much needed therapeutic compounds. Wayman has extensive experience in biotechnology and is the’ go to’ contact for biolistic, chloroplast transformation and small molecule synthesis. Research topics currently being explored by Wayman include glycosylation and humanization pathways/strategies.
Biotechnology | Plant Synthetic Biology | Recombinant protein expression | Candidate PhD
Edison is a computational chemist and biophysics protein designer at Helico. Edison’s primary goal is to build novel computational models of biological processes to obtain fundamental insights difficult to get by other means. Edison has more than six years of research experience in computational and theoretical physical chemistry. He holds an MSc in Computational Chemistry and he is a PhD candidate in physics spanning topics about Monte-Carlo and optimization technics, molecular dynamics methods, and quantum mechanics with an emphasis on computational modelling.
Quantum Physics | Computational chemistry | Scientific algorithm developer | Candidate PhD
Zachary (Zach) is a bioinformatics engineer at Helico, aiding in software development and handling systems administration. Zach's personal expertise lends to managing the local cluster of machines that power Helico's bioinformatics software platform. He’s particularly interested in the computer simulations used to guide Helico's experimental design.
Biomedical engineering | Software deployment | System administration | BE (Hons) candidate
Yanni is a research scientist at Helico, where she is responsible for the R&D activities in the laboratory. Yanni has expertise in molecular biology, plant biotechnology and bioinformatics. Passionate about science, she has two PhD, one in biotechnology and another one in plant science & computational biology. She also has 3 years of experience in biochemistry and bioinformatics, working as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Otago.
Molecular Biology | Plant Biotechnology | Bioinformatics | PhD
Our work at Helico is guided by our advisors and their expertise in the advancement of plant biology, pharmaceutical research and patent protection.
Amir was Head of Business Development for BiondVax, a publicly traded company developing a Universal Flu Vaccine. Prior, Amir served as CEO of Amorphical (developing the next generation of Calcium-based therapies) and SoluBest, a drug delivery company and CRO. Amir holds a PhD in Molecular Biology from the Weizmann Institute of Science and an Executive MBA from Technion, Israel.
Commercial activity | Commercial Partnerships | Funding structure
David Jackson and his lab study gene sand signals that regulate plant growth and architecture. His team’s investigating a unique way in which plant cells communicate, by transporting regulatory proteins via small channels called plasmodesmata.
Plant Biotechnology expert | Scale-up and Manufacturing processes | Biotherapeutics
Viola Kung is a partner in the firm's Patent Procurement practice focusing on patent prosecution and patent counseling in the chemical, pharmaceutical, diagnostics, biotechnology and small molecule arenas. Viola was a scientist by training and worked in the R&D labs for over 15 years, and thus has a deep understanding of the science. She is an inventor of a total of 21 US patents in the areas of immunoassay methods and kits; kinetic microtiter plate readers, heptane derivatized membrane, DNA detection methods; DNA-protein separation methods; liposome formulations, protein conjugation, bone resorption and biotin reagents. Viola also has numerous publications in scientific journals.
Life science patents | Biotechnology patents | Complex IP Protection
Nikolai is passionate about improving plant physiology and has devoted much of his previous study to understanding plant growth and development. Nikolai also has a keen interest in bioinformatics, which he used during his PhD for the analysis of biologically relevant data such as DNA sequencing and hormone concentrations.
Developmental Biology | Gene Networks | Bioinformatics | PhD
Sylvain Marcel is a subject matter expert in plant-made pharmaceuticals with over 20years of expertise in research and development, product and process development, large-scale manufacturing and CMC/regulatory support.As VicePresident Protein Expression Sciences at iBio, he led upstream process development and manufacturing, actively participated in the establishment of GMP procedures, and developed the company’s product pipeline and line of services. Prior to iBio, Dr. Marcel joined Caliber Therapeutics’ efforts to build and operate a large-scale biotherapeutics manufacturing facility using vertical farming as the plant production method. As a Senior Scientist, he also optimized the plant expression platform and co-designed the pilot-scale facility.Dr. Marcel obtained his Ph.D. from the RWTH University in Germany where he studied the accumulation of therapeutic and industrial proteins in several plant models, including tobacco.Dr.Marcel’s work over the past 20 years was instrumental in establishing development and manufacturing processes to advance plant-made pharmaceuticals closer to regulatory approval.
Our team is dedicated to bring cutting edge biotechnology and computational last advances together.
The Seed of Life represents Beginnings and Completion, Wholeness, Diversity, Fertility and Regeneration, Strength and Balance. This ancient and universal symbol has seven circles representing a fundamental geometry of nature and humanity. We see it in the seven colours of the rainbow. We hear it in the seven main musical notes. We live it seven days a week. The symbol is a talisman for Helico, bringing together two opposite sides of the company in harmony. The floral element speaks directly to plants and nature, while the geometry represents mathematical expression and the company’s scientific approach. Helico is dedicated to developing new seed of life and spreading them around the world.
