Greater Cambridge Area
Commercial research scientist with over 30 years' experience in the discovery of novel treatments for and the diagnoses of diseases with unmet medical needs. Formerly at Pfizer and responsible for research into neurodegenerative diseases in the UK. Subsequently, set up Cambridge Drug Discovery as a co-founder and Chief Executive, which was sold to BioFocus plc and then on to Charles River. Since then, helped to raise over £370 million, mostly for early-stage life sciences companies, and enabled inward investment into the UK of over £6 billion. Now served on the boards of multiple therapeutics, research services, research tools and diagnostics companies worldwide. Worked with teams to enable trade sales and out licence therapeutic assets over the last 25 years for upfront payments, milestones and estimated future royalties exceeding £1.5 billion. Interested in how using Bayesian decision theory can improve research productivity. Specialties: • outlicensing therapeutic assets • technical due diligence • mergers and acquisitions • advice on fundraising strategies • R&D strategy and management • outsourcing and contract pricing • business development • inward investment strategies • grant appraisals and revisions • technical and commercial training
Revolver Therapeutics is developing the next-generation of peptide therapeutics that unlock new routes to more effective cancer and other disease treatments. Revolver's innovative peptide discovery platform is discovering the next-generation peptide therapeutics that target transcription factors. This proprietary, engineering-biology screening platform enables us to rapidly screen millions of peptides in cells to identify functional inhibitors. Peptides that functionally bind to a target transcription factor, then enable cell growth under competitive conditions, so that the most active peptides can be enriched and identified.
Talisman Therapeutics is a human stem cell drug discovery company, based in Cambridge, UK. We are committed to revolutionising the discovery of treatments for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Our novel human stem cell models of AD provide a transformative platform for rapid and more therapeutically relevant compound identification, thereby offering the potential to significantly accelerate drug discovery and, more importantly, de-risk subsequent development. Our technology has transformed the discovery of potential new disease-modifying treatments by bypassing the restrictions imposed by current drug discovery paradigms that rely on conventional compound screening strategies due to the predictive validity of the assays systems (Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, 21, 2022) . For example, a novel antibody that selectively inhibits tau uptake into neurons, which is being further developed by Gen2 Neuroscience with funding from the Dementia Discovery Fund. Talisman has had multiple pharmaceutical and biotech partners, such as AstraZeneca, who have co-authored a peer-reviewed paper with the Gurdon Institute (Cambridge) and Talisman on key mechanisms of tau-related pathology (Cell Reports, 22, 2018). Small changes in the predictive validity of human stem cell assays can have a remarkably significant impact on downstream success rates.
Spliceor is unleashing gene therapy through RNA trans-splicing. The Company is an early-stage research and development biotechnology company spun out from the Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge, U.K. Spliceor is currently developing gene therapies for aggressive cancers for which current treatments are ineffective. Our mission is to provide tumour-selective and easily tolerated gene therapies to cancer patients. The underlying technology platform also has many applications for potential treatment of other diseases beyond cancer, in our future therapeutic pipeline development.
Cell Guidance Systems' research tools and services enable the control, manipulation and monitoring of cells, both in vitro and in vivo. Our technologies are enabling ground-breaking research, as well as developing fresh approaches to treating disease. CellGS has created and patented an innovative technology called PODS®, which provides a unique solution to protein instability by encaging proteins within crystal armour, protecting them right through to the moment when they are slowly released to their target. CellGS has multiple commercial and academic customers worldwide via distributors across more than 30 countries.
Scantox services support a broad spectrum of preclinical drug development elements. From safety pharmacology, formulation development, regulatory toxicology studies, including supportive functions such as as clinical pathology, bioanalysis, histology all the way to manufacturing and distribution of products for both phase 1 and phase 2 clinical trials.