Dr Susan Boyd

Susan has worked in the computational chemistry or chemoinformatics departments of Pfizer (Sandwich), Celltech (Cambridge) & Scynexis (Ongar, Essex). Prior to that she worked with Molecular Simulations Inc (now Accelrys) as Product Specialist for their library design tools.

An organic chemist by training, she has a wealth of experience in the application of chemoinformatics & molecular design tools to accelerate the drug discovery process, both for affinity prediction and for identification of potential ADMET issues.

Her experience spans:

• Protein structure-based design
• Pharmacophore modelling
• Statistical data modelling (QSAR, neural nets, decision trees)
• Library enumeration & design
• Chemoinformatics/Data handling
• Virtual screening (2D & 3D)
• Training of chemists and computational chemists

Dr Dorica Naylor

Dorica is an independant computational chemistry consultant who can assist with CompChem Solutions projects when appropriate. Dorica has worked in the Computational Chemistry and Cheminformatics departments of Parke Davis/Pfizer (Cambridge), Peptide Therapeutics (Cambridge), Millennium (Cambridge) & Celltech/UCB (Cambridge).

Initially she worked as a physical chemist in the Rudjer Boskovic Institute (Zagreb), then as a computational chemist in Prof. Garland Marshall’s Lab in Washington University School of Medicine (St. Louis, USA), and then in Prof. Janet Thornton’s Lab in UCL (London).

A pharmacist by training, with a PhD in Physical Chemistry, Dorica has a wealth of experience in the application of Molecular Design methods and techniques and Cheminformatics tools to accelerate the drug discovery process, both for affinity/selectivity predictions and for identification of potential ADMET issues.

Her experience spans:

• Structure-based drug design
• Homology modelling
• Pharmacophore modelling
• 2D/3D virtual screening
• Statistical data modelling (2D/3D QSAR, neural nets, RP)
• Data handling
• ADMET predictions

Andrea Walmsley

Andrea has almost 20 years direct experience of small molecule Chemistry gained from working within both large and small Pharmaceutical / Biotech companies.

Her career began working within the Medicinal Chemistry group at a large Pharma company in the UK for 10 years as a Research Scientist, followed by working for Biotech / small Pharma companies in progressively senior positions. This included 5 years working for a successful, 'virtual' pharma company where she held the position of Discovery Chemistry Manager. Here, in addition to the Discovery responsibilities of molecule design, she was also responsible for the outsourcing of synthetic work and CMC campaigns. Her key achievements have been the design & instrumental input into several programmes which are currently in PI/PII Clinical trials.

During her career, she has worked within the the key therapeutic areas of virology, neurology, pain & inflammation, before becoming an independent Chemistry & CMC Consultant in July 2008.

An organic chemist by training, she has a wealth of experience in the application of chemoinformatics & molecular design tools to accelerate the drug discovery process, both for affinity prediction and for identification of potential ADMET issues.

Discovery

• Management of Lead ID and Lead Optimisation
• Medicinal Chemistry design of focused libraries
• Chemical modifications to improve ADME profiles / create novel compounds
• Assistance with patent drafting and strategy Assistance with compound storage & management

Development

• Management of technical & service agreements
• Management of the PRD & GMP phases
• Management of supplementary studies - analytical development & validation, stability studies, salt screens, polymorph studies, syntheses of Ref Stds, impurities and metabolites.
• Support for Regulatory submissions

Ian Matthews

Ian has over 20 years experience working in the biotech / pharmaceutical industry. After spending 13 years with ICI / Zeneca / AstraZeneca as a chemistry team leader, Ian moved to Avidex (a start up Biotech Company based near Oxford) as the Senior Chemistry Project Manager. Here he was responsible for the discovery and early scale up of RhuDex, a novel, first-in-class small molecule therapy for the treatment of Rheumatoid arthritis, which is now in Phase 2 trials. Subsequently Ian has worked as a medicinal chemistry consultant for a number of small and medium sized Biotech companies on a range of therapeutic areas. He has particular expertise in the design and management of chemistry programs conducted through external Chemistry CRO's, both in the UK, Eastern Europe and Asia. This has led to a successful track record, both in discovery and scale-up chemistry projects. Ian was awarded BSc and doctoral degrees in synthetic chemistry from the University of Southampton and completed postdoctoral work at Indiana University (USA) under Prof. P D Magnus. He has over 30 publications including more than 15 patents to his name. Ian is well situated to offer consultancy services throughout the South East of England either at client offices or remotely.

• Medicinal Chemistry consultancy
• Synthetic route design
• Drug discovery program definition and design
• Fully independent assessment and management of chemistry CRO's

Julie Warneck

Julie Warneck is a Director of Protogenia Consulting Ltd, which offers pre-clinical development consultancy services to the pharmaceutical / biotech industry. Julie studied Biochemistry & Toxicology at University of Surrey, UK and has 20 years industry experience in pharmaceutical R&D spanning virtual biotech to medium sized Pharma. In her previous role as Head of Pre-clinical Operations at Serentis Ltd, Julie was responsible for all aspects of non-clinical development activities to support clinical regulatory submissions including pre-clinical development strategy, selection and management of CROs, protocol design and monitoring of studies on time and within budget. Prior to Serentis, Julie worked for Takeda Cambridge, Paradigm Therapeutics, Amedis Pharmaceuticals, Celltech and Chiroscience. She has an established background in developing small molecules from early stage drug discovery, through non-clinical development and into early stage clinical development in a variety of therapeutic areas including oncology, inflammation, pain, endocrinology, cancer adjunct therapy and dermatology.

The services offered include:

• Identification, selection and liaison with CROs for research models
• Full management of outsourced pharmacology & ADME studies
• Pharmacokinetic analysis and modelling
• Assistance with development candidate nomination
• Pre-clinical gap analysis & strategic planning to enable clinical development and product registration
• Assessment of non-clinical programme budget and resource requirements
• Programme Management up to end of Phase 2
• Support for regulatory submissions (IND, CTA, MAA, IMPD, IB)
• Full management of outsourced safety & ADME studies
• Due diligence for product in-licensing

Neil Walden

Neil is a highly experienced IP information specialist who has worked within Pfizer, Rhone-Poulenc Rorer & GSK. He has particular experience in the areas of novelty, prior art, Freedom to Operate and infringement having spent 20+ years in industry in these areas. He can assist with many areas of IP information and patent searching including:

• Patent searches in areas of novelty, prior art, Freedom to Operate and infringement
• Markush Chemical structure searching using STN, Marpat and MMS with analysis and presentation of results to agreed formats from Chemical structure searches
• Reaction searches (CASREACT and other STN Reaction databases)
• Chemical route FTO searches for Chemical Research, Pharmaceutical R & D novelty / FTO
• Text searching including biological target searches for small molecule and biopharmaceutical discovery research
• Pharmaceutical formulation and preclinical development searches, including in-licensing
• Patent information (e.g. patent families, patent expiry data, legal status for major patent offices)
• Invalidity searches of hard-copy sources (e.g. PhD theses & British Library documents and books
• Text mining (e.g. Linguamatics)