About Heptares | Management
Dr Malcolm Weir, Founder, Director and Chief Executive
Officer
| Malcolm has a BSc and PhD in biochemistry and biophysics from Imperial College, London. He was Head of the Biomolecular Structure Department and then the Molecular Sciences Division of GlaxoWellcome with responsibility for 300 people engaged in target validation and lead discovery. During this time he led the application of structural biology and modelling to drug discovery, resulting in the advancement of clinical candidates to a wide range of diseases. He 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. Inpharmatica was sold to Galapagos NV in 2006. He joined MRC Technology in 2006 in order to establish Heptares Therapeutics Ltd in July 2007, as co-Founder and CEO. Malcolm was elected Visiting Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College, London in 1997 and is on the Chemistry and Chemical Biology Advisory Boards at the same university. He served on the Council of the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council from 2004 - 2011 |
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Dr Fiona Marshall, Founder and Chief Scientific
Officer
| Fiona has a BSc in biochemistry from Bath University and a PhD in neuroscience from Cambridge University. She has more than 15 years' experience in genomic-based drug discovery with particular expertise on G-protein-coupled receptors. She led the first group to show that GPCRs could form heterodimers and has published more than 40 peer-reviewed papers in the area of GPCRs. She spent 12 years at GlaxoWellcome/GlaxoSmithKline where she held a number of senior positions including Head of the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Head of G-protein-coupled receptor research. She was Director of Discovery Pharmacology, Europe for Millennium Pharmaceuticals and then spent several years as an independent consultant to a variety of venture capital and biotech companies, including Inpharmatica, Merlion, Galapagos, Paradigm, Cancer Research Technology, Shire, CellAura, Bioimage, Chroma, Ablynx and Sentinel. She was chair of the BBSRC biochemistry and cell biology committee for three years and is a member of the Cancer Research Development committee. |
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Daniel Grau, President
| Dan brings more than 15 years of experience developing, partnering, and commercializing life science products and technologies. He was a Senior Advisor to Heptares during 2010-2011 focused on business development and strategy and currently serves on the Product Advisory Board of Concert Pharmaceuticals. Previously, Dan served as President and CEO of Cortria Corporation, a venture-backed clinical-stage company focused in cardiovascular disease, and as Chief Operating Officer of CombinatoRx, Inc., a public biotech company (today Zalicus). Earlier in his career, he worked with Pharmacia Corporation (now Pfizer) as a business consultant focused on the commercialization of Celebrex™, Mirapex™, and Detrol™, and was Director of Marketing and Business Development for a healthcare information technology startup. Dan earned his BA with High Honors in English from Davidson College, where he held a Charles A. Dana Honor Scholarship, and received his MPhil in Philosophy from Yale University, where he held an Andrew J. Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities. |
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Dr Miles Congreve, Head of Chemistry
| Miles obtained a BSc in biological chemistry from Leicester University and a PhD in synthetic chemistry from Cambridge University, before joining Glaxo in 1993. He worked on a range of GPCR, other receptor and enzyme projects in both Lead Optimisation and Hit-to-Lead phases, a number of which successfully led to clinical candidates. He then moved to Cambridge in 1999 to manage the GlaxoWellcome Chemistry Laboratory in the University Chemistry Department to work on solid phase library technologies. In this role he initiated a number of collaborations with academics across the UK. In 2001 he joined Astex Technology (now Astex Therapeutics) to establish the chemistry team and to develop and validate fragment-based drug discovery as a new approach to structure-based drug design and lead identification. He was promoted to Director of Chemistry in 2006. The platform delivered success against a broad range of projects (collaborative and in-house), including six pre-clinical or clinical candidates. He joined Heptares in 2008. Miles is co-author of over 50 publications and co-inventor on more than 30 patent filings. |
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Dr Barry Kenny, Chief Business Officer
| Barry has over 25 years research and management experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. He was previously Vice President, Drug Discovery at Takeda Cambridge with overall responsibility for IND discovery. Prior to this, he was Commercial Director at Paradigm Therapeutics where he was responsible for several company transforming deals, including the broad CNS collaboration with Takeda in 2005. He was also instrumental in the subsequent acquisition of Paradigm by Takeda in 2007. Barry co-founded Cambridge Drug Discovery (CDD) in 1997, and was Director of Business Development for Biofocus following its merger with CDD in 2001, establishing a wide range of international deals and collaborations. Before this, he was at Pfizer Central Research and was responsible for the successful discovery and progression of several drug candidates into clinical development. He also spent eight years at Syntex Research Scotland, where he completed his PhD and post-doctoral studies.
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