Manjiri Bakre

Manjiri Bakre- a cell biology veteran with extensive experience in multiple areas of technologies such as AI/ML, microfluidic assays, microarrays and proteomics. She has spent over two decades in R &D across basic research and applied research in India, US, Singapore in academia and corporate world. She is the Founder and CEO of OncoStem Diagnostics, an Oncology focussed start-up developing innovative tests for optimum and personalised treatment planning. At OncoStem, Manjiri drives fund raising, investment management and with her deep technical and scientific experience drives R &D. She enjoys connecting with clinicians /B2B stakeholders on science and products of OncoStem in various conferenced and CMEs. She has successfully led two fund raise rounds for OncoStem from Artiman Ventures and Sequoia Capital. Under her leadership, OncoStem has grown from product ‘as a power point concept’ to use of the product in clinics internationally today in a quality driven central lab with international accreditations. Manjiri has a Ph D from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. She started her career in the US with Mt Sinai School of Medicine as a post-doctoral researcher followed by Research Scientist at Moores Cancer Center, University of California at San Diego. Post a successful stint at the Genome Institute of Singapore she moved back to India in 2007 and led a group in cancer drug discovery at Avesthagen followed by multi-disciplinary research on ‘point-of-care’ diagnostics at Philips Research in Bangalore and The Netherlands. Manjiri is a recipient of multiple awards like, Young Scientist award given by International Union of Biochemists and Molecular Biologists (IUBMB, 2006); Best Entrepreneur award -Global Women in STEM start-up (2017), Entrepreneur of the Year award from Indian Achiever’s Forum (2021). She has published in many peer-reviewed journals such as Nature Medicine, has patents, mentored students and given talks in prestigious international conferences in US, Canada, Australia, Spain, S Korea etc. She has also volunteered with iSpirt on rapid test development for Covid-19. OncoStem has won key awards like NASSCOM-Best Innovation of the year, ET Health world- Health-tech innovator of the year in 2019-2020 and Aegis Graham Bell award (2021) given by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India; NITI Aayog, India.