Discovering early predictive biomarkers for perinatal depression

Dr. Clarissa Yates, the CEO and Founder of Ketim Therapeutics, established the company driven by her own experience with postnatal depression. Facing the challenge of finding no biological tests to screen for future depression in her subsequent children, she realised the urgent need for better treatment strategies and diagnostic tools in mental health care. This personal journey ignited her mission to break down barriers in mental health and develop innovative solutions to improve the lives of mothers and families worldwide.

Why Ketim

  • CEO and Founder

    During Clarissa’s PhD at the University of Queensland she developed world-class expertise in the biology of depression and anxiety. She developed novel assays for predicting patient response to antidepressants and is on cutting edge of molecular techniques to probe the biology of mental illness.

  • Clarissa has over a decade of scientific research experience and has developed and validated assays for treatment-resistant depression, purity assays for stem cell transplantation, and utilised a vast array of technologies for molecular detection of RNA and proteins in tissue and blood samples.

    Clarissa has expertise in advanced molecular biology, assay development, and validation in blood-based biomarkers for mental health, particularly depression. She also has a passion for entrepreneurship and research commercialisation. During her PhD, she identified a novel biomarker panel to predict patients' response to antidepressants, which she has submitted for a provisional patent application at the University of Queensland.

    Her work is highly regarded in assay development, and she recently published a first-author paper in Cytotherapy, where she designed, developed, and validated safety assays for stem cell therapy products for Phase 1 clinical trials. During her PhD, she worked closely with the Mayo Clinic (USA), performing biomarker screening assays on blood samples from treatment-resistant depressed patients.

    Additionally, she served as a QA officer for an mRNA vaccine company, setting up electronic quality management systems (eQMS) for regulatory compliance documentation in mRNA vaccine manufacturing.

  • CSO and Co-Founder

    Dr. Trzaskowski joins Ketim with over 15 years of experience in statistical genetics, bioinformatics, and artificial intelligence. His diverse expertise and leadership in developing AI-powered analytics for health applications uniquely position him to drive Ketim’s mission of transforming perinatal mental health screening and therapeutic innovation.

  • Dr. Trzaskowski's extensive career includes significant contributions to the fields of genomics, machine learning, and complex AI models. As the Founder of InteliMagik and Co-Founder of Profenso, he has a proven track record of building AI automation platforms to solve complex healthcare challenges.

    Prior to his entrepreneurial ventures, Maciej served as Head of Research at Max Kelsen, a leading AI and data science firm, where he played a pivotal role in the company’s growth prior to its acquisition by Bain & Company. He also holds prominent academic positions as an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the University of Queensland and a Visiting Scientist at QIMR Berghofer and QUT, and is an Associate Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Information Resilience.

    Dr. Trzaskowski's contributions to scientific research have been widely recognized, with an H-index of 50 and over 15,000 citations. His research spans multiple health domains, including cancer, ophthalmology, and psychiatry, and he has been actively involved in polygenic risk prediction to better understand genetic influences on disease outcomes.