Meet our lab team

Head of Scientific Operations

Melissa Barr

Melissa has an academic background in Biochemistry and Cancer Biology and was awarded the prestigious Royal Society of Biology Student of the Year award in 2019, highlighting her significant potential in the field. During her research, Melissa contributed to a peer-reviewed publication in Cell Death and Disease, which investigated phenotypic changes in metastatic prostate cancer using 3D spheroid models, particularly under hypoxic conditions. This work can be accessed here.

Melissa’s research received attention from multiple mainstream media outlets, including The Independent, which highlighted its impact on advancing the understanding of tumour microenvironments. The article can be found here.

In her industrial career, Melissa progressed to a Senior Scientist role at a leading Contract Research Organisation (CRO), where she developed and optimised biochemical and cell-based assays across the preclinical drug discovery pipeline, from hit identification to lead optimisation. Now, as Head of Scientific Operations at Inaphaea BioLabs, Melissa combines her academic insights and industrial expertise to oversee the lab’s cutting-edge oncology research, ensuring high-quality and innovative project delivery for both clients and internal stakeholders.

Lead Scientist – Translational Biology & Academic Collaboration

Dr Amelia Hatfield

Amelia has an academic background in Pharmacology and Oncology, with research focused on understanding the mechanisms of action of anti-cancer agents in colorectal cancer, particularly in the context of mutant KRAS. She earned her MSc in Oncology at the University of Nottingham, conducting research at the Children’s Brain Tumour Research Centre (CBTRC), where her work was presented at the International Symposium on Paediatric Neuro-Oncology (ISPNO) in 2020 and published as a poster abstract. This abstract can be found here.

She then went on to complete her PhD at the same institution, presenting her findings at the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR) in 2022, with her abstract available in the EACR 2022 Abstract Book EACR22-0112 found here.

Leading the charge with academic partnerships, Amelia also serves as a Visiting Lecturer at King’s College London. This role further facilitates the ongoing collaboration with Cytolytix, the joint venture between ValiRx and King’s College London for developing treatments for Triple Negative Breast Cancer.

Laboratory Technician

Dylan Jones

Dylan has been working in pharmaceutical drug development and life sciences since 2021. He began his career as an Apprentice Laboratory Technician at Nottingham based Quotient Sciences Limited before transitioning into a permanent hybrid role as a Laboratory Technician and QC Analytical Scientist. In this role, he specialised in cleaning validation and verification while supporting both QC and development teams with a range of laboratory tasks.

Now, as Inaphaea BioLabs’ first Laboratory Technician, Dylan supports the team of scientists in advancing cutting-edge oncology research, ensuring high-quality project delivery.

Director

Gerry Desler

Gerry is a chartered accountant, who qualified in 1968 with a City firm, before becoming a Partner (1970) and Senior Partner (1985). During his time in the City, he has specialised in consultancy work, much of it involving funding and venture capital.

Gerry was previously the Finance Director of Premier Management Holdings plc, an AIM listed company and is on the board of a number of private companies.

Director

Dr Mark Eccleston

Dr Mark Eccleston is polymer chemist and biotechnology entrepreneur with over 30 years experience working in translation science in both drug and biomarker development. Mark is a former BBSRC Enterprise fellow and holds an MBA (Entrepreneurship). He is an inventor on over 30 patents ranging from peptide and CAR-T cell therapies to nucleosome enrichment as well as biodegradable chewing gum.

Mark is the Managing Director of OncoLytika Ltd, a UK based technology consultancy company with a successful track record of securing grant funding, strategic business development and client project management. He serves on the Scientific and Commercial Advisory boards of ValiRx Plc whose focus is progressing early-stage assets through the value chain and also supports commercialisation activities for its parent company and translational Contract Research Organisation, Inaphaea. He is a scientific founder of several companies, including Volition, where he currently serves as an independent scientific advisor supporting Nu.Q®️ Discover.

In addition to his commercial activities, Mark has supervised multiple PhD and Masters students at various universities, including the Open University, Greenwich University and DKFZ in Germany. He also serves as an external advisor to the Open University, contributing to modules focused on employability of biosciences graduates and employer expectations from graduates in terms of bioinformatics training.

Scientific Consultant

Gareth Griffiths

Dr Gareth Griffiths, holds a PhD in Immunology/oncology from the University of Birmingham and is now a scientific specialist in the isolation and growth of patient derived tumour cells. He has several years postdoctoral experience at the University of Manchester which was followed by a role as a specialist in high content imaging assay development at AstraZeneca. Following this, he cofounded Imagen Therapeutics, a company providing a CRO service to pharma and biotech.

An entrepreneurial driven scientist, he developed Imagen successfully over a 14 year period. He has proven expertise at every level of developing a company, encompassing commercial activities all the way to scientific project delivery. Combining his knowledge of advanced cell image analysis, patient derived tumour development and expertise in Immunology, he is now working to support Inaphaea as a scientific consultant.