Jan Thirkettle

CEO at Harness Therapeutics

Speaker

Jan is the CEO of Harness Therapeutics, a UK based RNA company developing protein-upregulation therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases. He has more than 25 years’ experience of pharmaceutical development and has played a leadership role in the commercialisation of therapeutics across all modalities.

Jan joined Harness from Freeline Therapeutics where he was start-up CEO and CDO overseeing establishment of a platform for a novel AAV capsid, and programme management. Prior to this Jan held roles at GSK spanning from Discovery to Manufacturing, latterly establishing the cell/gene therapy platform and playing a pivotal role in the commercialisation of Strimvelis.

Jan played a part in founding and serves on the Board of Epilepsy Gtx, a pre-clinical stage epilepsy gene therapy startup, spun out from University College London. Jan holds an MA in Chemistry and a DPhil in Biological Chemistry from the University of Oxford.