Hayley Binch is Head of Medicinal Chemistry, Basel at Hoffman-La Roche. Prior to her current role, Hayley worked Vertex Pharmaceuticals at both the San Diego and Oxford sites, where she worked on a number of kinases and pain targets as well as Cystic Fibrosis. Hayley completed her her PhD at the University of Bristol with Professor Tim Gallagher, followed by postdoctoral research positions at the University of Hamburg in the area of synthetic and enzymatic methodology for complex carbohydrate assembly and at Kings College London in the area of nucleophilic additions to asymmetric vinylphosphonamidates.

Vicky carried out a PhD and post-doc in total synthesis of macrocyclic natural products at Cambridge University with Prof Ian Paterson and at U Penn with Prof Amos B. Smith, III. Her industrial career initiated at Merck (Terling’s Park) working on neuroscience targets. She then moved to GlaxoSmithKline (Harlow) focussing on anti-infectives and anti-inflammatories. Upon joining Selcia in 2008, she rose from Senior Scientist to Director of Discovery. Upon Selcia’s acquisition by Eurofins in 2017, she has become general manager of Eurofins Selcia Drug Discovery and additionally taken on a global role as Business Line Leader of Integrated Drug Discovery Services at Eurofins Pharma Discovery Services. Vicky has a strong track record in innovative medicinal chemistry, and has delivered multiple pre-clinical candidates for customers. She is named on around 30 papers and patents and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Head of Discovery Operations, RNA Molecule Research (RMR)
Pharma Research and Early Discovery (pRED)
Roche Innovation Center Copenhagen (RICC)

As Head of Discovery Operations, RMR Christoph is responsible for leading the Oligonucleotides synthesis, Pharmacology, and Screening Operations teams and as a member of the RMR-LT he participates in defining and setting the strategy for RMR.

 Christoph holds a Master of Science and a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Southern Denmark (the lab of Prof. Jesper Wengel - one of the inventors of LNA). After his PhD, Christoph worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Danish Technical Univerisity. In addition Christoph holds an executive MBA in Technology, Market and Organisation from Copenhagen Business School.

Christoph started his biotech career in Cureon as chemist with the task of synthesizing the LNA monomers. The company was later merged with Pantheco A/S to create Santaris Pharma A/S in 2003, where he become group leader for the chemistry team. Later the group was joined with CMC, Bioinformatics, PK and Pharmacolgy to form the Research Operation Department for which he became the director. A position he held until the acquisition by Roche in 2014.

Lidia is the Head of Outsourcing Management for Chiesi Corporate R&D. She has 23 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry, started in 1992 in GSK Italy where she covered the role of Head of Licensing and License Management Department  and subsequently she become the Head of Procurement. She moved in Astra Zeneca Italy in 2003 with the role of Strategic Business Development & Planning Director, and joined Chiesi with the current role in 2009. Lidia has an extensive business development, commercial and procurement / outsourcing areas experience, with in-depth knowledge of large and medium pharma commercial and R&D processes and needs, and consolidated skills in outsourcing and business development strategies, asset evaluation & prioritisation, deal making, alliance management, P&L optimisation processes, at affiliate and corporate level.

Lidia is the Head of Outsourcing Management for Chiesi Corporate R&D. She has 23 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry, started in 1992 in GSK Italy where she covered the role of Head of Licensing and License Management Department  and subsequently she become the Head of Procurement. She moved in Astra Zeneca Italy in 2003 with the role of Strategic Business Development & Planning Director, and joined Chiesi with the current role in 2009. Lidia has an extensive business development, commercial and procurement / outsourcing areas experience, with in-depth knowledge of large and medium pharma commercial and R&D processes and needs, and consolidated skills in outsourcing and business development strategies, asset evaluation & prioritisation, deal making, alliance management, P&L optimisation processes, at affiliate and corporate level.

Duncan is an enthusiastic and accomplished medicinal chemist with extensive outsourcing experience, a 40-year proven track record with a Blue-Chip Pharmaceutical Company, and is the founder of Awridian Ltd.

Duncan has made significant contributions to numerous drug discovery projects, and is cited on many patents and publications including research areas such as prostaglandin agonists, histamine H2, opioids, angiotensin II and CCR3 receptor antagonists. He has been pivotal numerous lead generation projects gaining a unique insight into project and compound tractability. He has extensive outsourcing experience including projects to enhance screening collections, where he engaged with external partners to design, and synthesise appropriate compounds in a cost effective and timely manner. Duncan has recently published and presented on Open Innovation in Drug Discovery for which he is a strong advocate. He was a founder member of the DiscoverAssist™ Panel at the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst.

Duncan formed his consultancy company (Awridian Ltd) in 2012, and is currently working with a range of international companies and UK academics.

Duncan is an enthusiastic and accomplished medicinal chemist with extensive outsourcing experience, a 40-year proven track record with a Blue-Chip Pharmaceutical Company, and is the founder of Awridian Ltd.

Duncan has made significant contributions to numerous drug discovery projects, and is cited on many patents and publications including research areas such as prostaglandin agonists, histamine H2, opioids, angiotensin II and CCR3 receptor antagonists. He has been pivotal numerous lead generation projects gaining a unique insight into project and compound tractability. He has extensive outsourcing experience including projects to enhance screening collections, where he engaged with external partners to design, and synthesise appropriate compounds in a cost effective and timely manner. Duncan has recently published and presented on Open Innovation in Drug Discovery for which he is a strong advocate. He was a founder member of the DiscoverAssist™ Panel at the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst.

Duncan formed his consultancy company (Awridian Ltd) in 2012, and is currently working with a range of international companies and UK academics.

Duncan is an enthusiastic and accomplished medicinal chemist with extensive outsourcing experience, a 40-year proven track record with a Blue-Chip Pharmaceutical Company, and is the founder of Awridian Ltd.

Duncan has made significant contributions to numerous drug discovery projects, and is cited on many patents and publications including research areas such as prostaglandin agonists, histamine H2, opioids, angiotensin II and CCR3 receptor antagonists. He has been pivotal numerous lead generation projects gaining a unique insight into project and compound tractability. He has extensive outsourcing experience including projects to enhance screening collections, where he engaged with external partners to design, and synthesise appropriate compounds in a cost effective and timely manner. Duncan has recently published and presented on Open Innovation in Drug Discovery for which he is a strong advocate. He was a founder member of the DiscoverAssist™ Panel at the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst.

Duncan formed his consultancy company (Awridian Ltd) in 2012, and is currently working with a range of international companies and UK academics.

Inez is a pharmaceutical professional with extensive experience within the pharma and biotech industry. In-depth knowledge of the different elements of drug development and the interfaces between them. As partner and co-founder of 3D-PharmXchange she is responsible for the strategy and management of 3D-PharmXchange. In 2013 she was appointed as CEO for our client Treeway, a biotechnology company with a mission to develop therapies to cure ALS.

Her interests are in the strategic aspects and the valuation of drug and companion diagnostic development projects, as well as the potential for collaboration and synergy in this development space between big pharma and smaller biotech companies. She has a passion for driving results that truly impact critical decisions through leadership and/or participation in multidisciplinary efforts at the interface between science and business.

Prior to founding 3D-PharmXchange, she was Director Clinical Development and Chief Operating Officer of Kinesis Pharma. She also worked for several years as consultant and project manager on clinical and PK-PD projects in several therapeutic areas.

At Tibotec-Virco, she managed the clinical pharmacology program for their successfully approved HIV protease inhibitor Prezistra and follow-up compounds.  At Leiden Advanced Experts on PK and PD (LAP&P) she was responsible for modeling & simulation projects and project management.

Inez studied Medical Biology at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and obtained her PhD at the department of Pharmacology from the LACDR at Leiden University, The Netherlands. 

Inez de Greef, CEO, will speak about the discovery pipeline of Treeway. Inez will speak about the long history of GDNF and how Treeway is developing an AAV5-GDNF gene therapy for the indication ALS. In addition, she will present Project Mine, a genetic research project to identify new ALS targets and Treeway’s current target validation programme.

Garry Pairaudeauis currently Head of Hit Discovery at AstraZeneca; the group comprising HTS, Comp Chem, Virtual screening and DEL is responsible for generating high quality starting points for AstraZeneca. In addition, the group works extensively with academic centres of excellence through open innovation and strategic collaborations with groups such as MRC, CRUK, Life Arc and many others to help support academic drug discovery.

Garry also chairs the Global Chemistry Leadership team in AstraZeneca responsible for chemistry strategy and has been particularly active in building Automation and Machine learning capabilities in addition to continuing to lead AZ Discovery chemistry outsourcing.

Garry obtained his PhD in chemistry from the University of Southampton in 1991, followed by post-doctoral work at UC Irvine California.  He joined AstraZeneca in 1994 as a medicinal chemist and was part of the chemistry team that discovered Brilinta. He has experience leading projects through all phases of Drug Discovery contributing to multiple clinical candidates in the respiratory, inflammation and CV areas. He has a long standing interest in lead generation, hit identification and diversity screening.  Prior to taking up his current position in 2012 he was Director of Chemistry for the cardiovascular group at Alderley Park.

PhD from University of Barcelona and Post-doc at University of Sheffield with Prof V. Aggarwal.

Joined Almirall in 1998 as a member of the starting Combinatorial Chemistry Group. From 2000 to 2008 worked as chemistry program leader working on a variety of targets including GPCRs, enzymes, chemokines and ion channels in the Respiratory therapeutic area. Since 2009 promoted to Medicinal Chemistry Head of Section and Inhalation Team Leader of a multidisciplinary group devoted to the design of inhaled drugs. Since 2015 involved in Idea Generation Groups for developing incremental innovation and repositioning projects.

Worked in several strategic collaborative programs and in 2018 promoted to Head of Research Alliances of a group responsible for running collaborations with other Biotechs, CROs and academic groups, obtain public funding and coordinate open innovation initiatives.

PhD from University of Barcelona and Post-doc at University of Sheffield with Prof V. Aggarwal.

Joined Almirall in 1998 as a member of the starting Combinatorial Chemistry Group. From 2000 to 2008 worked as chemistry program leader working on a variety of targets including GPCRs, enzymes, chemokines and ion channels in the Respiratory therapeutic area. Since 2009 promoted to Medicinal Chemistry Head of Section and Inhalation Team Leader of a multidisciplinary group devoted to the design of inhaled drugs. Since 2015 involved in Idea Generation Groups for developing incremental innovation and repositioning projects.

Worked in several strategic collaborative programs and in 2018 promoted to Head of Research Alliances of a group responsible for running collaborations with other Biotechs, CROs and academic groups, obtain public funding and coordinate open innovation initiatives.

Brian has had a highly successful career in drug discovery in industry with GSK and Novartis. Brian has a BSc in Pharmacy and PhD from the University of Manchester where he worked on novel antifungal agents. This was followed by Post Doctoral study at the University looking at novel opioid-like analgesics, then a two-year industrial Post Doctoral position at Schering Plough in New Jersey focussed on the total synthesis of the marine natural products Pseudopterosins.

Brian then spent 12 years at Glaxo/GlaxoWellcome/GSK working in many different disease areas (CNS, respiratory, cardiovascular, GI and antibacterials). Moving to Novartis (Horsham) in 2002 he became Head of Chemistry with the site specialising in respiratory and GI research, as well as acting as an expertise hub for automated synthesis for the Novartis chemistry organisation (Global Discovery Chemistry). He developed a keen interest in the modulation of ion channels as a target class and the design of inhaled medicines, which he is now a recognised expert in.

Brian moved to the University of Sussex (November 2014), where he is now Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry growing a medicinal chemistry platform underpinned by extensive automated synthesis capability. His group’s focus is the application of high throughput automated synthesis in hit and lead optimisation and the synthesis of novel archive diversity enhancement libraries. Along with Professor Kevin Booker-Milburn, he is co-founder and co-director of Photodiversity Ltd, a start-up company from the Universities of Sussex and Bristol which specialises in the use of Photochemistry to produce novel sp3 rich fragment and diversity libraries for screening against Pharmaceutical and agrochemical biological targets.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain and registered pharmacist, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, chartered Chemist and chartered scientist. He is a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Chemistry organic and Medicinal Chemistry Sector committee. He is associated with a number of marketed compounds and multiple late stage clinical candidates and is a champion of diversity and inclusion (D&I).

PhD from Imperial College. Joined Glaxo in 1984 and stayed until 2009 worked on a variety of targets including ion channels, GPCRs, nuclear receptors and enzymes. During the GSK era worked in the Neurology area as a department head in Medicinal Chemistry largely focussed on pain programmes.

Left GSK in 2008 and joined Almirall in Barcelona as Head of Chemistry where the focus was on respiratory projects and inhaled delivery and in 2013 returned to the UK to join the Drug Discovery Group at the University of Sussex with the responsibility of developing collaborations with both academic groups and industry and raised 12.5M in funding to support the group’s activities.

Started working with Bicycle in 2016 as a consultant while still at Sussex and joined as Director of Chemistry in October 2018

Brice is a Director Drug Discovery at Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV). He leads drug discovery activities in the context of individual projects and pharmacology platforms. As Director Drug Discovery, Brice provides scientific advices and leadership to portfolio of drug discovery activities projects and pharmacology platforms. He works with partners from both academia and industry in order to deliver pertinent and optimal biological test cascades as well as safe and efficacious pre-clinical candidate which will be part of the next generation of anti-malarials. Brice has a particular interest in molecules and biological assays that tackle the liver stage of the parasite and more precisely the hypnozoites reservoir in order to find the new drugs that will help eradicate Malaria.

He joined MMV in November 2011, bringing with him more than 14 years of experience in drug discovery, gained primarily with the Genomic Institute of the Novartis Foundation (GNF) and Addex Pharmaceuticals S.A. He has broad experience in molecular pharmacology and drug discovery in several disease areas such as Neuroscience, Metabolic Disease and Inflammation, and has successfully led and contributed to teams at all stages of drug discovery. Brice holds a PhD in Neuroscience and Immunology from the University of Sheffield (UK) and has published a significant number of scientific papers and patent applications.

Werngard Czechtizky obtained her PhD at ETH Zürich. After a postdoctoral stay at Harvard University, she worked on GPCR lead generation in a global Chemical Biology platform at Aventis. At Sanofi, from 2005, she moved into a parallel synthesis team working in the fields of CNS and CV diseases. In 2010, she became leader of a Medicinal Chemistry section working on Diabetes programs. In 2014, she was appointed Head of Chemistry at Sanofi R&D Germany, with therapeutic focus on Diabetes, pain and inflammatory indications. Since 2017, she is Head of Medicinal Chemistry, Respiratory, Inflammation and Autoimmunity, at AstraZeneca in Sweden.

Werngard Czechtizky obtained her PhD at ETH Zürich. After a postdoctoral stay at Harvard University, she worked on GPCR lead generation in a global Chemical Biology platform at Aventis. At Sanofi, from 2005, she moved into a parallel synthesis team working in the fields of CNS and CV diseases. In 2010, she became leader of a Medicinal Chemistry section working on Diabetes programs. In 2014, she was appointed Head of Chemistry at Sanofi R&D Germany, with therapeutic focus on Diabetes, pain and inflammatory indications. Since 2017, she is Head of Medicinal Chemistry, Respiratory, Inflammation and Autoimmunity, at AstraZeneca in Sweden.