SMR COMMITTEE
Chair:
Dr Daniel O Donovan
Currently Associate Director, Oncology Chemistry at AstraZeneca in Cambridge. I am a dedicated drug discovery professional with expertise in medicinal chemistry, oncology and novel modalities. My experience spans both small molecule drugs and innovative approaches such as PROTACs and molecular glues. My career highlights include contributing to the discovery of Camizestrant, a breast cancer drug currently in Phase III trials, and playing a core role in target selection at two leading pharmaceutical companies (AstraZeneca and Bayer AG), helping to deliver strong preclinical portfolios primed to deliver groundbreaking medicines for the future.
Vice-Chair:
Prof Sam Butterworth
Sam is a Senior Lecturer in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Manchester, where his group work on applying synthetic and biological chemistry to address questions of relevance to human health. Prior to this he worked at the University of Birmingham from 2013 and at AstraZeneca from 2005-2013. His work at AstraZeneca led to the development of a targeted anti-cancer agent AZD9291, that was approved by the FDA in November 2015 and is now used internationally under the name osimertinib/Tagrisso. As of 2018 this drug has been used to treat >30,000 patients worldwide, and along with his colleagues Sam has been recognised for this work through the 2017 RSC Malcolm Campbell Award and the 2018 ACS Heroes of Chemistry award.
Honorary Treasurer:
Dr Richard Davenport
Richard is currently a Senior Programme Leader at C4X Discovery working on Inflammation and CNS programmes. Richard has over 20 years' experience of drug discovery research and has previously held senior medicinal chemistry positions at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, UCB and Celltech working in the therapeutic areas of Inflammation, CNS and Metabolism.
Honorary Secretary:
Mrs Pamela Brown
Pam has over 30 years experience in anti-infective drug discovery, initially gained at GlaxoSmithKline and legacy companies, leading medicinal chemistry teams in hit to lead and lead optimisation phases of drug discovery. Pam led the chemistry at Cantab Anti-infectives Ltd which was recently bought by Spero Therapeutics. Pam Brown Consulting was formed in 2017, offering independent advice in antibacterial drug discovery and medicinal chemistry to SMEs and biotechs. Pam has over 35 publications in patents and peer-reviewed journals on the design and synthesis of antibacterial agents in a variety of antibacterial classes. She holds a degree in Chemistry and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Fundraising Officer:
Dr Linos Lazarides
Linos is currently Senior Business Development Executive at Charnwood Discovery, specialising in medicinal & synthetic chemistry and preclinical integrated drug discovery and development services. He has over 10 years industry experience as a medicinal chemist/project leader, gained at GSK & various CRO’s (Selcia & Eurofins Discovery), with involvement in drug discovery projects resulting in a clinical candidate and numerous development candidates, in various therapeutic areas. He is co-author on >25 patents and publications. He has an educational background of Medicinal Chemistry (MSci) and Synthetic Organic Chemistry (PhD / Postdoc) at University College London.
Prof Mo Alavijeh
Mo is a science entrepreneur with over 30 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry, having responsibilities as wide-ranging as R&D and innovation, business development and strategic alliances at Pharmidex. He was previously head of drug metabolism, DMPK/PD at Vernalis Research, before which he was DMPK team leader at Aventis Pharma. Mo is visiting Professor at University of Hertfordshire and a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and the Royal Society for Medicine (FRSM).
Dr Darcey Black
Darcey Black is Founder/Director of TherapeutAix (www.therapeutaix.com), of recently established life-sciences consultancy, focused on providing strategic input and project management in drug discovery and early clinical development to life sciences start-ups, biotech and pharma. He has over 30 years’ experience in pre- and early clinical drug discovery working in all aspects from target ID and validation, LO and translational studies in early clinical development, in different therapeutic areas including CV, inflammation and neuroscience. Previously, he was Head External Innovation in the Innovative Medicines Unit at Grünenthal Innovation IMU, Aachen, Germany. He joined Grünenthal as Head of Translational Research in 2011. Prior to joining Grünenthal, he worked for Merck (formerly Organon/Schering-Plough) in the UK in senior project and line management roles, and for Pfizer and Glaxo (now GSK) in the UK and Switzerland.
Dr Kate Brown
Kate is Senior Research Associate/CBIS Senior Fellow at the University of Cambridge and a Senior Research Fellow currently in the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr Ken Cameron
Ken is Biophysics Team Lead at Cancer Research Horizons. He is an expert in structural analysis, purity determination and quantitation using NMR and skilled in implementing new NMR technologies to aid the drug discovery process. An experienced analytical chemist with practical skills in LC-MS, GC, UV and IR, with comprehensive knowledge of the drug discovery process.{br}Ken has responsibility for two NMR instruments including quality of results, new experiments, performance tests and maintenance.
Dr Andrea Gohlke
Andrea is Associate Director / Associate Principal in Biophysics at AstraZeneca
Dr Paulette Greenidge
In Silico Discovery Leader at at Sitryx Therapeutics, Paulette is a Drug Design and Computational Chemistry specialist adept at harnessing established and avant-garde technologies in agile project management settings with 25+ years' experience. 36 patent applications, currently 9 granted patents.
Dr Mike Hann
Mike has over 45 years experience of Pharma drug discovery activities with Roussel, Wyeth, GD Searle and Glaxo/GlaxoWellcome/GSK, initially as a medicinal chemist, then as a computational chemist and more recently in managing teams in structural biology, biophysics and bioMS and other sciences at the interface of chemistry and biology. He has contributed to the development of concepts and published extensively on computational chemistry, fragments, attrition reduction and compound disposition in cells, degrons, chemical biology and maintains a keen interest in new methodologies but with a firm grip on the realities of the eternal challenge that drug discovery presents. He recently retired from GSK but remains active in the drug discovery community.
Dr David Hirst
David is a Director at MSD, London.
Dr Phil Jeffrey
Phil is Senior Vice President of Preclinical Development at Bicycle Therapeutics and has over 35 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Hehas a successful track record in drug discovery from early lead optimisation through to clinical proof of mechanism and proof of concept across a wide varietyof therapeutic areas and drug modalities. Phil previously held positions at Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, SmithKline Beecham and The Upjohn Company and is an Honorary Professor at the William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London.
Dr Agnieszka Konopacka
Agnieszka is an experienced drug discovery scientist specializing in targeted protein degradation and utilizing genetic, molecular, cell and chemical biology approaches for target validation, developing PROTACs and novel TPD technologies. {br}My scientific interests include immunology, oncology and neuroscience.
Dr Gregor Macdonald
Gregor is Vice President Head of BD&L at Lundbeck. He was formerly Senior Director of Scientific Licensing (Neuroscience), within Janssen Business Development, the Pharmaceutical Companies of J&J. In this role, he leads the global identification and evaluation of all clinical stage therapeutic opportunities in Neuroscience, particularly focussed on Alzheimer's disease, Mood disorders and Schizophrenia. Prior to this position, Gregor was Head of Neuroscience Medicinal Chemistry at Janssen, where he led discovery teams in Belgium and Spain towards the identification of clinical drug candidates in the fields of Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia and order psychiatric and neurological disorders. In addition, Gregor was also extensively involved in identifying external drug discovery opportunities and prosecuting research collaborations with a variety of academic, biotech and pharma partners. Previously, he has worked within the Medicinal Chemistry depts. of GlaxoSmithKline and SmithKline Beecham, also in the CNS area, identifying several late clinical stage drug candidates. Gregor is also a co-author and co-inventor on over 110 scientific publications and patents and has been an invited speaker and panellist at several national and international conferences.
Dr Taiana Maia de Oliveira
Taiana is Associate Director at AstraZeneca in Cambridge.
Dr Andy Merritt
Dr Andy Merritt’s is Head of Academic Engagement for LifeArc, supporting the development of early career talent in STEM areas across all stages of academic study from A-level through to postdoctoral research positions. Previously, Andy was Head of Chemistry at LifeArc’s Centre for Therapeutic Discovery (CTD) for over 13 years. In close collaboration with academic scientists, the CTD developed and prosecuted innovative drug discovery programmes emerging from academic research. LifeArc also supports academic research group access to compound screening collections covering a range of target classes and technologies. Before joining LifeArc in 2009 Andy was a Director of Discovery Medicinal Chemistry at GlaxoSmithKline, covering early lead discovery from screening campaigns, global responsibility for outsource support for lead discovery chemistry and the supply of tool compounds for target validation. Between 1995 and 2001 as part of the GlaxoWellcome organisation he led interdisciplinary teams focusing on lead discovery and optimisation incorporating the development of new chemical technologies. Andy joined the former Glaxo organization as a senior medicinal chemist in 1988 following postdoctoral studies in the US.
Dr Ciaran O'Reilly
Ciaran is Principal Scientist/Project Leader at Sygnature Discovery
Prof John Overington
John is currently VP Discovery Informatics at Exscientia plc. He was formerly CIO at the Medicines Discovery Catapult. He has over 30 years experience of drug discovery informatics, across academic, biotech and large pharma sectors. He has deep experience of the application of informatics methods to problems in drug discovery, ranging from target selection through to real world evidence analytics of drug patient benefits. His current professional interests focus on big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Dr Martin Swarbrick
Martin has recently joined Ryvu Therapeutics. His previous role was Associate Director, Cancer Research UK Therapeutic Discovery Laboratories (CRUK-TDL), where he led the Medicinal Chemistry, DMPK, and Protein Sciences and Structural Biology functions. CRUK-TDL has an exclusive focus on establishing and prosecuting biologically-themed multi-project alliances with commercial and academic partners. Prior to joining CRUK, he worked in industrial drug discovery and development at GlaxoSmithKline, leading medicinal chemistry teams and discovery projects.
Dr Chris Tinworth
Chris is a Scientific Leader in Medicinal Chemistry at GSK, specialising in the use of novel modalities in drug discovery.
Dr Chiara Valenzano
Chiara is an Associate Director at Astex Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge. Chiara completed her studies in synthetic organic chemistry in Italy, to then move to the USA to pursue a PhD at Brown University, centred on studying the biosynthesis of polyketide antibiotics. In 2011, she was awarded a Marie Curie International Incoming fellowship to work at the University of Cambridge. The focus of her research, in academia at first then in industry, has been the development of small molecules to interfere with and repair altered biological processes linked to cancer and diseases of the central nervous system. Chiara scientific expertise lies in biophysics, assay development, FBDD and early stage drug discovery.
The Society for Medicines
Research is a registered charity and the officers of the Society (Chair,
Vice-Chair, Honorary Secretary, Honorary Treasurer, Fundraising
Officer and Development Officer) are also the charity trustees. The
trustees are jointly responsible for setting the strategic aims,
objectives and direction of the Society. This includes, for example, the
overall management and decision making of the Society such as
recommending changes to the rules or recommending new officers for the
Society and approving the appointment of new members of the Committee.
As well as attending the
quarterly meetings of the committee, the trustees also meet together at
least once a year to ensure that the business of the Society is
conducted within the law and in accordance the governing document of the
Society. The SMR completes an annual return for the Charity Commission of England
and Wales which gives information about its activities and accounts.
