John is the Chairman of Pronota NV and Deputy Chairman of Algeta ASA (listed on the Oslo stock exchange). Previously he was a Director of Abingworth Management, an international life sciences venture capital firm, where he was involved in founding, financing and serving as a Director of several biotechnology companies in Europe and the USA – many of which obtained listings on public stock exchanges. Prior to that John spent 14 years with Celltech Group and was a member of its Board when it listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1994. John has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cambridge and an MBA from the London Business School. In addition to the positions mentioned above, John has in the past five years been a non-executive director of the following companies: Ablynx NV, Epigenomics AG, Alnylam Inc, Chroma Therapeutics Ltd, Solexa Ltd, XCounter AB, MicroMet Inc, and Oxxon Therapeutics, Inc.

Malcolm obtained his BSc and PhD in biochemistry and biophysics at Imperial College, London and then joined Glaxo in 1983. He became Head of the Biomolecular Structure Department and then the Molecular Sciences Division of GlaxoWellcome following the 1995 merger, with responsibility for some 300 people engaged in target validation and lead discovery. During his time at GlaxoWellcome he led the application of structural biology to drug discovery, resulting in the advancement of clinical candidates to a wide range of diseases. He joined Inpharmatica Ltd as CEO in 2000, growing it from the spin-out stage to a 100-person company focusing on the application of predictive bio- and chemo-informatics methods to drug discovery, selling services to more than 40 pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and generating candidates in metabolic disease through its own chemistry and pharmacology laboratories. Inpharmatica was sold to Galapagos NV in 2006. Malcolm was elected Visiting Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College, London in 1997, and to the Council of the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council in 2004.

Fiona has a BSc in Biochemistry from Bath University and a PhD in Neuroscience from Cambridge University. She has 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.

Martin joined venture capital firm MVM Life Science Partners LLP in November 2002. He was previously with 3i plc where he was a member of the healthcare investment team. Prior to that, he was an Engagement Manager with McKinsey & Company based in London and Mumbai. Martin has a degree in Biochemistry (Oxford) and completed a PhD (Cambridge) in Molecular Biology in 1994. Martin is a member of the boards of Argenta Discovery Ltd, Healthcare Brands International Ltd, PregLem SA and Serentis, Inc., and was on the board of Oxxon Therapeutics, Inc. and Xention Ltd.

Michael has been Managing Director of Clarus Ventures since the firm’s inception in 2005. He has over 24 years of direct industry and investment experience within the healthcare sector, including being a General Partner in a healthcare venture capital firm since 1997. From 1986 to 1997, Michael was an executive at Hoffmann-LaRoche where he held various positions including Vice President of Preclinical Research and Development, and Global Head of Biotechnology.

Michael obtained his PhD summa cum laude from the University of Munich and held positions at the California Institute of Technology and the Basel Institute for Immunology.

Anja is a Managing Director of the Novartis Venture Fund in Basel, Switzerland. She is active in Switzerland and Europe and also responsible for expanding the fund’s presence to Asia Pacific. Before her appointment to the Novartis Venture Fund she held the position of assistant to the Chairman and CEO of Novartis. Prior to joining Novartis she was an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Co., a global consultancy, where she worked with companies in health care, pharmaceuticals, and biotech in the US, Europe and Emerging Markets.

Anja is currently on the boards of Covagen AG, Diagnoplex Biosciences AG and MerLion Pharmaceuticals Pte Ltd. She holds a PhD in physics from Cornell University.

Originally a physicist from Edinburgh, Richard started in protein crystallography in 1966 when he was a PhD student working with David Blow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) on the structure of chymotrypsin, which in 1967 was one of the first ever protein structures determined. As a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow at Yale, he characterised biochemically the voltage-dependent sodium channels from nerve membranes. In 1975 and back at LMB, he determined the first ever 3D structure of a membrane protein, bacteriorhodopsin. He then developed the methods for electron crystallography of 2D crystals, and used them to obtain the atomic structure of bacteriorhodopsin in 1990. He served as Joint-Head of the Structural Studies Division at LMB (1986-2000) and Director (1996-2006), while developing an interest in G-protein-coupled receptors and single particle electron microscopy. He is a fellow of the Royal Society (1983), a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences (1996), and has been awarded several prizes for his work (Willam Bate Hardy, Ernst Ruska, Rosensteil, Louis Jeantet and Gregori Aminoff).

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.

Barry has over 24 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.