Dr Senthil Chinnakannan
Dr Senthil Chinnakannan is a Tamil-origin vaccine designer and molecular biologist, co-founder of Infinitopes and the architect of the company's viral vector delivery platform. His career has been defined by serial contributions to some of the most consequential vaccine programmes of the past two decades, combining deep molecular virology expertise with a track record of translating academic research into scalable, clinically viable vaccine products.
Chinnakannan holds a PhD in Molecular Virology from the University of London. Before co-founding Infinitopes, he spent a significant portion of his career at the University of Oxford, where he played a pivotal role in co-developing multi-antigen vaccines for Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, Influenza, COVID-19, and cancer. He is credited with inventing and contributing to five vaccine patents for the University of Oxford and is regarded as a world expert in the design and delivery of multi-epitope vaccines — the class of vaccine construct that Infinitopes deploys in its ITOP1 programme.
In 2021, Chinnakannan co-founded Infinitopes alongside Dr Jonathan Kwok and Dr Lian Ni Lee. His specific contribution to the company is the high-efficiency vector delivery system — the mechanism by which Infinitopes' precision antigens are packaged and delivered to the immune system to stimulate strong, durable CD8+ cytotoxic T-cell responses. This delivery architecture is one of Infinitopes' two world-leading platforms and is what distinguishes ITOP1 as a candidate capable of generating immunological durability, not just a transient immune response.
Infinitopes' ITOP1 entered a Phase I/IIa clinical trial in 2026, backed by $35 million in total seed financing from Octopus Ventures, Amplify Bio, Cancer Research Horizons, Manta Ray Ventures, and Macmillan Cancer Support. Chinnakannan's expertise in multi-epitope vaccine architecture — spanning design, molecular biology, and the regulatory science of novel vaccine vectors — has been foundational in taking Infinitopes from Oxford laboratory research to first-in-human clinical development.
