Seeding Drug Discovery Committee
The Seeding Drug Discovery (SDD) Committee makes funding decisions on all Seeding Drug Discovery Awards.
Members
Professor William N Charman
Director, Centre for Drug Candidate Optimisation at the Victorian College of Pharmacy, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
SDD Committee role: Chair
Dr Ted Bianco
Director, Technology Transfer, Wellcome Trust
SDD Committee role: Staff member
Dr Chas Bountra
Chief Scientist, Structural Genomics Consortium, University of Oxford
SDD Committee role: Independent member
Dr Paul England
CEO of Proxara Biotechnology Limited
SDD Committee role: Independent member
Dr John Griffin
Chief Scientific Officer, Numerate Inc.
SDD Committee role: Independent member
Dr Timothy Rink
Chairman of Technology Transfer Strategy Panel
SDD Committee role: Independent member
Dr Richard Seabrook
Head of Business Development, Technology Transfer, Wellcome Trust
SDD Committee role: Secretary
Biographies of the independent members
Professor William N Charman is Professor of Pharmaceutics, and the Director of the Centre for Drug Candidate Optimisation, at the Victorian College of Pharmacy, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He received his PhD in pharmaceutical chemistry from the University of Kansas in 1985, and from 1986 to 1989 was Senior Scientist/Group Leader at the former Sterling-Winthrop Research Institute in Rennselear, New York. His research interests include enhanced absorption and bioavailability of poorly water-soluble drugs, lymphatic drug transport, lead candidate optimisation and antimalarial drug discovery. He has received various international awards and has published over 300 scientific papers and communications. He is a member of four international editorial boards, and is an associate editor of the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences. He is an elected fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, a previous member of two corporate boards and a member of various scientific advisory boards.
Dr Chas Bountra recently became the Chief Scientist, Structural Genomics Consortium, University of Oxford. Previously, he has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for twenty years, most recently as the Vice President of Biology at GlaxoSmithKline (UK) within the Neurology Centre for Excellence in Drug Discovery. An electrophysiologist by training, he has played a major role in advancing more than 30 drug candidates into the clinic for disorders including post-operative pain, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis, stroke, motor neuron disease and epilepsy. Dr Bountra was involved in the launch of the first novel treatment for IBS and his group was the first to show that neurokinin NK1 receptor antagonists are anti-emetic - a discovery that directly influenced drug development. During his tenure at GlaxoSmithKline, he held Visiting Professorships at both Imperial College (Neuroscience and Mental Health) and University of Oxford (Translational Medicine).
Dr Paul England was formerly a lecturer at the University of Bristol (1973-84), where he had an interest in protein phosphorylation and signal transduction. He moved to SmithKline Beecham in 1985, where he was a Vice-President in Drug Discovery from 1990 to 1998. He established and ran SmithKline Beecham's worldwide High Throughput Screening Department between 1994 and 1998, with 150 staff and an £11 million annual budget. In 1998 Dr England moved to Aurora Biosciences in San Diego, where he stayed until 2002; between 1998 and 2000 he was Senior Vice-President of Research. He is currently CEO of Proxara Biotechnology Limited.
Dr John Griffin is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Numerate, Inc., a San Francisco start-up focused on developing an in silico drug engineering process and applying it to the design of new medicines. In 1997, he co-founded and became Chief Scientific Officer of Theravance, Inc. Publicly traded since 2004, Theravance has exploited concepts of multivalency to discover and develop a robust pipeline of product candidates that address infectious, respiratory, gastrointestinal and other diseases. Dr Griffin's academic background is in organic and biological chemistry, having obtained a BS from Hope College and a PhD from the California Institute of Technology, and having trained as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School. From 1990 to 1998, he was Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. He is an author of 39 original articles and an inventor of 27 issued patents.
Dr Timothy Rink is a former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Aurora Biosciences Corporation, a drug discovery technology company in San Diego, California. Under his leadership, the company grew from a three-person start-up in 1995 to a publicly traded company with $50 million revenues in 1999. He was a member of the international Scientific Advisory Board for the Joint Infrastructure Fund from 1999 to 2001. Dr Rink is currently chairman of the board of Solexa, and is a board member of Akubio Limited, BioVex Limited, Sepracor Inc and Santhera Pharmaceuticals; he also serves on the scientific advisory boards of Amylin Pharmaceuticals and Serono. Over the past 16 years, he has also served on the boards of seven other biotechnology companies (Alanex, Ciphergen, CoCensys, Gryphon and NPS in the USA, and Astex and Lorantis in the UK). Dr Rink was President and Chief Technical Officer of Amylin Pharmaceuticals from 1990 to 1995 and was Vice-President for Research at SmithKline from 1984 to 1989. Prior to this he was a Lecturer in Physiology at the University of Cambridge. He received his MA, MD and ScD degrees from the University of Cambridge.