2024 Yorkshire Bio -Partnering

Helen is Co Founder of Lifted Ventures. Lifted exists to increase the flow of early stage capital to female founders and promote the significant business benefits of backing women. The Lifted Ventures flywheel has an angel network at its core, alongside education, community and consultancy. She is a Board member of the UKBAA, and a member of the Women Angel Investment taskforce. Helen is also interim CEO of Conduit Connect, an impact investment fund, impact investment educator and angel network.Previously Helen was a Founding Board Director of multi award winning  NorthInvest, and in 2020 she founded Fund Her North, a collective of women in VCs who support female founders to get equal access to finance. Prior to this Helen was Managing Director of the Yorkshire Post and The Scotsman

Helen Philippou is a Professor of Translational Medicine at the University of Leeds. She researched blood coagulation at Imperial College for 10 years, prior to moving to the University of Leeds (in 2002) to create translational impact with her research. She founded the first small molecule therapeutic spin-out company (LUNAC Therapeutics) from the University of Leeds, with a co-founder chemist. LUNAC is developing a first-in-class anticoagulant (anti-clotting agent) with no bleeding side effects. LUNAC is recognised by the biotech world having been shortlisted for 4 “Best Start-up” Awards and winning 3 of these in 2020 and 2021. LUNAC was featured in J.P. Morgan's first-ever Top 200 Female-Powered Businesses report, where LUNAC was rated 55 out of 6,085 UK high-growth companies where females are founders and/or for a large part engaged in management team, in 2021. Prof Philippou also featured as a Mover and Shaker in 2021 BioBusiness Report, BioBeat as one of 30 trendsetters from across the UK who are tackling the biggest health challenges of our time. More recently, Prof Philippou has co-founded a second spin-out company from the University of Leeds as CEO, ClotProtect Therapeutics Limited, to address unmet clinical needs of patients bleeding in major surgery and trauma. Prof Philippou is Chair of the International Society of Fibrinolysis and Proteolysis, and Chair for the FXI and Contact System Standardisation sub-Committee of the International Society of Thrombosis and Haemostasis (ISTH) ISTH. In addition, she served as the Scientific Secretary for the British Society of Haemostasis and Thrombosis (BSHT) between 2016-2014. She is on the Editorial Board of the journal, Journal of Thrombosis and Hemostasis (JTH).