Our ventures team

Clare Terlouw is Head of LifeArc Ventures, responsible for LifeArc’s investments across the life science sector.

She is the head of the investment team and a member of the Early Ventures Investment Committee. Clare oversees the Early Ventures strategy at LifeArc, which is a seed to Series A investment strategy, with the ability to further fund select companies into later rounds of funding. LifeArc’s investment strategy is to seek to generate positive impact on patients and financial returns by investing in early translational sciences and technologies in areas of high unmet patient need.

Clare was previously at Syncona Investment Management Ltd, a FTSE250 healthcare investment trust, where she was Head of Corporate Development. Syncona founds and builds life sciences companies to deliver transformational treatments to patients. She has 15 years of biotech and healthcare financing experience as an investment banker in the City of London, previously a Managing Director at Numis Securities, with significant expertise in growth funding for innovative life sciences companies in the private and public markets.

Clare is also a board member of the BioIndustry Association, a non-executive director of Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst, and an investor director on a number of private venture backed companies.

Imran Hamid is Senior Investment Principal, responsible for both leading new investments and managing existing portfolio companies.

Imran has over 15 years of biopharma, digital health and med tech experience with a career spanning clinical practice, strategy, entrepreneurship, M&A, R&D and venture investing.

Prior to joining LifeArc, Imran was Senior Director of New Ventures and Transactions at Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Director of Business Development and Licensing at Mallinckrodt and Director of Commercial Discovery at Merck & Co.

Imran received his medical degree from Imperial College London, where he graduated with joint honours from the Imperial College Business School. He is a member of the Royal College of Surgeons.

Sohaib Mir is a Senior Investment Principal at LifeArc.

Most recently he was an Investment Director with ALSA Ventures, focused on therapeutics investing. Prior to that he was a Principal at Cambridge Innovation Capital and he has also worked at Perella Weinberg Partners.

Sohaib qualified in Medicine at the University of Birmingham where he also completed a PhD in CNS regeneration. He practised medicine at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge and gained an MPhil in Bioscience Enterprise from the University of Cambridge.

Chris is an Investment Principal.

He was most recently an Associate at the trans-Atlantic venture investor Advent Life Sciences, leading the diligence on a range of therapeutic and medical device opportunities, and supporting the growth of several portfolio companies.

Prior to that, Chris worked for ten years in the University technology transfer sector with UCL Business and Cancer Research Technology. He successfully supported and commercialised a number of oncology and gene and cell therapy opportunities, and in addition, he was involved in executing a number of strategic initiatives such as the CRUK Stratified Medicine Programme and Grand Challenge awards.

Chris received his M.Biochem from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Genetics from the University of Cambridge in the lab of Prof. Fiona Watt.

Enrique joined LifeArc as Investment Principal in March 2019.

Prior to LifeArc, Enrique was corporate development associate at Mereo BioPharma, where he was involved in new product acquisitions of clinical programmes in rare diseases and niche specialty indications. He also worked as a life sciences strategic consultant and held business development positions at Vernalis and CellCentric.

Earlier, he carried out postdoctoral research in stem cell biology at Universities of Cambridge and Chicago. Enrique holds a PhD in Molecular Medicine from Manchester University, and an MBA from Cambridge Judge Business School.