SynBioBeta Speaker
Sergiy Velychko
Founder & CEO
Soxogen
May 2026, SynBioBeta
Speaker
Sergiy Velychko, PhD, is a stem cell biologist and the founder and CEO of Soxogen. He received his BSc in Biology from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in 2010, graduating with distinction, and his MSc in Molecular Bioengineering from the Biotechnology Center of TU Dresden, Germany, on a competitive scholarship. His master's thesis focused on correcting heritable immune deficiencies through precision genetic engineering of patient-derived human iPSCs, contributing to a later publication in Molecular Therapy.In 2012, he joined the laboratory of Prof. Hans R. Schöler at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster, Germany, where he studied the molecular roles of Oct4 and Sox2 in cellular reprogramming. His key finding — that excluding Oct4, long considered the most essential of the Yamanaka factors, from the reprogramming cocktail actually improves the developmental potential of the resulting iPSCs — was published as a cover article in Cell Stem Cell in 2019, selected as a Top Technical Advance of the Year by The Scientist, and awarded Best Publication of the Year by the German Stem Cell Network. He defended his PhD Summa Cum Laude in 2020.During his postdoc, Sergiy engineered super-SOX — a chimeric transcription factor with enhanced Sox2/Oct4 cooperativity that drives efficient iPSC reprogramming across multiple mammalian species, including non-human primates. In 2022, he joined the laboratory of Prof. George Church at Harvard Medical School, where he continued his work on cellular reprogramming and naïve pluripotency, and where the super-SOX work was published in Cell Stem Cell in 2024.In 2026, he founded Soxogen, a biotech startup developing enhanced cellular reprogramming technologies with applications in regenerative medicine and reproduction.
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