Assoc. Prof. Yen Choo is ​Executive Director of co11ab and Associate Professor of Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine at Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKC Medicine), a joint medical school of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Imperial College London.

Assoc. Prof. Choo is a serial bioentrepreneur with over 20 years of C-level and Board experience in establishing early-stage biotechnology ventures. During this time he was responsible for day-to-day management of startups based in incubator facilities within the UK’s golden triangle, and has raised finance from both pure-play financial VCs and corporate VCs, as well as HNW angel investors. Assoc Prof Choo was the founder and CSO of Gendaq, the biotechnology company that developed the zinc finger DNA-binding technology used for gene editing (acquired by Sangamo Therapeutics). He was the founder and CEO of Plasticell, one of the UK’s pioneering advanced therapy companies based on combinatorial stem cell screening technologies. He was also the founder and CEO of Progenitor Therapeutics, a small molecule therapeutics company established jointly with GSK to discover drugs that regenerate tissues of the human body.

Assoc. Prof. Choo obtained a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Cambridge and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology under the supervision of Nobel laureate Sir Aaron Klug.