Scientific Advisory Board

Sosei Heptares is fortunate to work with leading experts from the pharmaceutical industry and academia, providing advice ranging from science and technology through drug design and development to commercialization strategies.

Malcolm has extensive career experience and expertise in drug discovery and development. He was the Head of Biomolecular Structure and then the Molecular Sciences division of GlaxoWellcome with responsibility for 300 people engaged in target validation and lead discovery. During this time, he pioneered the application of structural biology and modelling to drug discovery, resulting in the advancement of clinical candidates to a wide range of diseases.

Malcolm joined the structural bioinformatics and drug discovery company Inpharmatica Ltd as CEO in 2000, growing it from the spin-out stage to a 100-person company which was sold to Galapagos NV in 2006. He then joined MRC Technology in 2006 to establish Heptares Therapeutics Ltd in July 2007, as Co-Founder and CEO.

Malcolm has been Visiting Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College, London since 1997 and advises on translational sciences and structural biology at the same university. He served on the Council of the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council from 2004 to 2011, and continues to advise the UK Government periodically on biotechnology issues. He received the Malcolm Campbell Memorial Prize 2015, awarded by the UK Royal Society of Chemistry’s Biological and Medicinal Chemistry Sector, in recognition of his contribution to GPCR drug discovery. In 2016, he received an honorary DSc from the University of Hertfordshire for services to research, and is a Trustee of the Biochemical Society. In 2019, he was named as a Honorary Member of The British Biophysical Society (BBS). He has published over 70 papers and patents.

BS, University of Rochester, in Chemistry with High Distinction, 1973

PhD, Columbia University, in Organic Chemistry, 1978

Fellow, Department Of Chemistry, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1979

In 1979, after doctoral studies with Professor Gilbert Stork, Columbia University, and a postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Barry Trost, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Peter joined the Medicinal Chemistry Department of ICI Pharmaceuticals in Wilmington, DE. He worked there 31 years, continuing through its spin-off as Zeneca Pharmaceuticals and its merger with Astra Pharmaceuticals to form AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals. Following his retirement in 2010 he established PhaRmaB LLC as a platform for providing consulting and mentoring in drug discovery and development.

Peter has worked at developing treatments to many different diseases, through multiple mechanisms of action, and has had more than 10 compounds advance into development. Early in his career he initiated, and worked on, ICI’s leukotriene antagonist project. During this effort he co-invented and helped develop Accolate™, the first leukotriene antagonist to be approved in the US. After developing and out-licensing a back-up, ZD3523, he moved onto inhibitors of human neutrophil elastase. Two compounds from those efforts, ZD8321 and ZD0892, entered clinical development. Since then he has worked on, or led, chemistry teams targeting: neurokinin antagonists, β-estrogen agonists, γ-secretase inhibitors, H3 antagonists, 5-HT1B antagonists and dual NET/DAT reuptake inhibitors. In the area of neurokinin antagonists he led the chemistry teams working on dual NK1/NK2 antagonists for pulmonary disease [ZD6021 and ZD2249] and selective NK1 antagonists for CNS indications [ZD4974]. Towards the end of his time at AstraZeneca, he led the preclinical 5-HT1B-antagonist [AZD3783] and the H3-antagonist [AZD5213] programs.

Peter is an author on greater than 200 scientific papers, presentations, and patents. He is active as a consultant, editor, and board member. He currently holds appointments as: Digests Editor, Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters; Member, ISC Advisory Panel, Harrington Discovery Institute; and Affiliated Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Delaware. He was the Chair of the 2004 Gordon Research Conference on Med Chem, Chair of the 17th Tetrahedron Symposium [2016], served 6 years on the ACS MEDI executive committee, 8 years as Member and Chair of the Carothers Award Committee of the Delaware Section ACS and 9 years on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Keystone Symposia. At AstraZeneca, in addition to managerial duties, he progressed up the Scientific Ladder to the position of Senior Principal Scientist.

After his retirement he was chosen as the “Distinguished Lecturer” for the 2010 AstraZeneca Excellence in Chemistry Award Symposium. In 2011 he was named to the ACS Division of Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame and in 2018 he was named a Fellow of the American Chemical Society.

Richard is a molecular biologist and biophysicist who is distinguished for his contributions to protein crystallography. Richard was the first to solve the structure of a protein found in the membrane of a cell.

Using X-rays to analyse bacteriorhodopsin, a light-harvesting protein found in tiny microbes, Richard discovered that it was composed of helices. Then, in collaboration with neuroscientist Nigel Urwin, he uncovered the three-dimensional arrangement of the helices within the bacterial membrane by electron microscopy — pioneering the powerful technique’s use to study biological molecules. Their model was published in the journal Nature in 1975.

Richard has worked at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge since 1973, and was its Director from 1996–2006. He was a founding scientist of Heptares Therapeutics Ltd, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Sosei Group Corporation. His awards include the 1999 Gregori Aminoff Prize, the 1993 Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine and the 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution.

Paul Leeson is a medicinal chemistry consultant with >35 years’ experience in major pharmaceutical companies: Smith Kline and French, Merck Sharp and Dohme, Wyeth (USA), AstraZeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline.  Since 2014 he has advised pharmaceutical companies, start-ups, and academia.  At AstraZeneca (1997-2011) Paul was head of medicinal chemistry at the Charnwood site and he led AstraZeneca’s Global Chemistry Forum, holding accountability for the company’s chemistry strategy.  Paul’s drug discovery contributions have been in the cardiovascular, neuroscience, respiratory and inflammation therapy areas.  He has a special interest in compound quality and in 2014 he received the Nauta Award from the European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry.  Paul has a PhD from the University of Cambridge and holds an honorary professorship at the University of Nottingham.

Roberto is a Visiting Professor at NHLI and chairs the Imperial College Confidence in Concept programme. Roberto is a cell biologist and before joining Imperial he was Vice President and head of Biology in the respiratory therapy area at GSK. He also spent 4 years as CEO of MRCT, the technology transfer arm of the MRC, where he was involved in the commercial translation of MRC research and helped the creation of spinout companies such as Heptares. He has served as an advisor to a number of venture capital companies and is currently a Venture Partner with Brandon Capital Partners, an Australian life sciences venture capital investor. He has served on the board of several biotechnology companies. Roberto obtained a PhD from Nottingham University in 1981 and went on to do two post-docs at the University of Lausanne and the University of Liverpool before joining Glaxo in 1986.

Chris is a membrane protein biochemist working at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) who pioneered the use of conformational thermostabilisation for the structure determination of GPCRs. This technology was the foundation of Heptares Therapeutics and Chris was one of the co-founders of the company in 2007. More recently, his lab developed mini-G proteins that have led to structures of GPCRs in the active coupled state by X-ray crystallography and single-particle cryo-EM. Chris was awarded his PhD (1989) by the University of Bristol, after which he worked in the Department of Biochemistry, Cambridge, before moving to the LMB in 1992. In 2019, he was named as a Honorary Member of The British Biophysical Society (BBS).

John is an experienced scientist and leader with extensive pharmaceutical/biotechnology R&D experience in small molecule- and biologics-based therapeutics for immunological and cardiovascular disorders. John has a strong track record of leading multi-disciplinary global research teams at Vertex, Janssen and Takeda, driving novel therapeutic entities into pre-clinical/clinical development via integrated translational research. 

John is currently an independent consultant in biotech and pharma. He co-founded Estrellita Pharmaceuticals LLC and is a member of the American Association of Immunologists. John holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Bristol.

John joined the Sosei Heptares Scientific Advisory Board in June 2022.

 

Sheena Radford is the Astbury Professor of Biophysics at the University of Leeds and a Royal Society Research Professor. Following her position as a research fellow with the late Professor Sir Chris Dobson at the University of Oxford, she joined the academic staff of the University of Leeds in 1995. She was Deputy Director of the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology at the University of Leeds in 2009 – 2011 and its Director in 2012 – 2021. She currently holds a Royal Society Research Professorship at the University of Leeds.

Her work focuses on the question of how proteins fold, and how and why proteins aggregate and form amyloid fibrils linked to human disease. Her group also studies how bacteria fold proteins into their outer membranes to build the cell wall. These research areas have implications for the treatment of diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease and the development of antibiotics targeted against Gram-negative pathogens.

In 2020 Sheena was elected Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to molecular biology. Sheena graduated in Biochemistry at the University of Birmingham in the UK and completed her PhD with the late Professor Richard Perham in Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, UK.

 

Duncan Richards is Climax Professor of Clinical Therapeutics, University of Oxford. He is Director of the Oxford Clinical Trial Research Unit , a UKCRC registered clinical trials unit with a broad portfolio across musculoskeletal sciences, oncology, surgical trials, and experimental medicine. Duncan also directs the NIHR Oxford Clinical Research Facility, a newly refurbished 13 bedded facility providing capability across the medical sciences division. 

His research interest is the demonstration of clinical proof of concept of novel therapeutics through the application of experimental medicine techniques, especially human challenge studies. 

Prior to taking up this role, Duncan spent nearly 20 years working in Pharmaceutical R&D in a number of clinical development roles. Latterly Duncan was head of Clinical Pharmacology and Experimental Medicine for GSK Research and Director of GSK’s phase 1 and experimental medicine unit in Cambridge (CUC). 

Angela Russell is a Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and holds a joint appointment between the Departments of Chemistry and Pharmacology at the University of Oxford. She gained her MChem degree from the University of Oxford in 2000 and her DPhil in Organic Chemistry in 2004. In 2007 she was awarded a prestigious Research Councils’ UK Fellowship in Medicinal Chemistry and in 2018 she was conferred to Professor of Medicinal Chemistry. She has published over 100 original articles, book chapters and patent applications. Her research interests are centered around the discovery of new molecules and mechanisms to manipulate cell fate and to translate them into therapeutic agents, particularly for degenerative diseases. She has initiated a number of collaborative research programmes, including a medicinal chemistry approach to the modulation of gene expression to treat fatal rare genetic diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). She co-founded the Oxford spin-out MuOx Ltd, (now part of Summit Therapeutics plc), and co-founded OxStem Ltd in 2016. In 2016, she was named as a ‘Rising Star’ in the BioBeat 50 Movers and Shakers in BioBusiness report. In October 2020 she was awarded a 2021 Harrington UK Rare Disease scholarship in recognition of, and in support of, her work on developing a therapy for DMD.

Serena is the Head of Human Genomics and Translational Data at ELIXIR, in the European infrastructure for bioinformatics and life-science data, based in Hinxton, UK. Serena is a member of the ELIXIR leadership team. She develops and implements a programme to construct and operate a sustainable genomics data infrastructure (to facilitate discoverability, access and analysis of data) to support life science research and its translation to medicine. As part of this, she leads multiple large consortia across Europe (grants totalling >50M Euros). 

Prior to joining ELIXIR, she was a Director within the Human Genetics and Computational Biomedicine group at Pfizer. In this role, she led and implemented a genetic and precision medicine strategy to support drug target selection and clinical programmes for the Pain and Sensory Disorders Research Unit. She was also a member of the ABPI Stratified Medicine Working Group. Earlier in her career, she worked within the Toxicogenomics group at GlaxoSmithKline. She gained postdoctoral experience at the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London and a PhD from the University of Cambridge, with a focus on the genetic susceptibility to disease.