The Scientific Advisory Board

Dr Kirsty Hewitson – Chief Scientific Officer

Professor Keith Jones – Professor of Synthetic Chemistry, Institute of Cancer Research
Keith holds a BA in Natural Sciences and a PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of Cambridge. Over a 25 year period, he held academic appointments in Chemistry Departments culminating in running a Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences Research Group consisting of some 15 academics and their associated researchers. In 2005, he moved to the Chair of Synthetic Chemistry in the CRUK Centre for Cancer Therapeutics at The Institute of Cancer Research in Sutton where he leads teams carrying out research into new cancer therapeutics.

Dr Keith Ray – MD of Ray BioScience Consulting Ltd
Keith has recently established Ray BioScience Consulting to provide scientific advice on the discovery and development of small molecules for a wide range of inflammatory diseases. Keith was previously Director of Rheumatoid Arthritis Disease Biology within the Respiratory and Inflammation Centre for Drug Discovery at GSK. Keith has extensive knowledge of target discovery, screening and small molecule preclinical drug development in the anti-inflammatory field.

Dr David Billington – Executive Director of Great Western Research, MD of Watch House Associates Ltd
David currently splits his time between Great Western Research, a £14M research initiative, and consulting for the drug industry via his Company, Watch House Associates. Prior to this, David held positions at L’Oreal (Director of Discovery), Servier (Oncology) and Merck Sharpe and Dohme (Neurosciences). David was also Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at Aston University for seven years.

Dr Peter Warn – Senior Lecturer in Translational Medicine (University of Manchester), Founder of Euprotec Ltd
Peter’s research has focussed on the characterisation of virulence attributes in fungal strains, the assessment of anti-fungal drugs and the development of in vivo models of fungal disease. Based upon this work, Euprotec Ltd was founded, which provides high quality infectious disease biology services to organisations involved in both anti-bacterial and anti-fungal drug discovery and development.