Management
Nicki Thompson, PhD
CEO
Nicki Thompson, PhD
CEO
Nicki has over 25yrs’ leadership experience in pharma and biotech.
Nicki was founding CEO of Amphista Therapeutics, a targeted protein degradation company, where she steered Amphista through Series A and B funding rounds, raising ~$150Million in funding and closing two pharma collaborations (deal value $2.3Bn).
Her previous roles include: VP/Global Head of External Drug Discovery (Roche); Senior Director, Business Development (GSK).
Nicki’s Biotech experience includes Chairperson of Nanna Therapeutic’s Board , founding CEO at VirionHealth and Head of Drug Discovery at Syntaxin.
Damian Crowther, PhD FRCP
Co-founder, Head of Research
Damian Crowther, PhD FRCP
Co-founder, Head of Research
Damian has over three decades of entrepreneurial, commercial, clinical and academic experience.
Damian has worked as an Entrepreneur in Residence at: the Dementia Discovery Fund and Cambridge Innovation Capital, where he co-founded TRIMTECH Therapeutics, and at Oxford Science Enterprises, where he built several neuroscience biotechs, including EndLyz Inc.
Previously, he worked as head of early drug discovery at AstraZeneca Neuroscience, developing small molecule, biologic and new modality therapies for dementias.
Earlier in his career Damian practiced clinical neurology before leading a discovery neuroscience research group at the University of Cambridge. He also held an honorary appointment at UCL and co-founded the HealthTech startup GPnotebook.
Damian undertook medical training at Cambridge University, then Oxford University, as a clinician scientist (PhD FRCP).
Alex Alanine, PhD MRSC
SVP Head of Chemistry
Alex Alanine, PhD MRSC
SVP Head of Chemistry
Alex is drug discovery executive with almost three decades of pharma and biotech experience.
Previously Alex served as a consultant and R&D advisor providing his industry expertise to biotech companies on a range therapeutic targets and modalities including CNS protein degraders. For five years he was the COO at Nanna Therapeutics which culminated in an M&A by Astellas.
Earlier in his career Alex worked at Roche for 22 years, where he had several leadership roles including Section Leader Medicinal Chemistry and Vice Director of the Neuroscience group, where his team discovered 15 NME’s, and played a pivotal role in developing Evrysdi, a spinal muscular atrophy treatment. He has also worked closely with the Pharma Partnering team and supported the evaluation of collaborator’s discovery platforms and therapeutic assets.
Alex holds a PhD from the University of Leeds.
Andrea Testa, PhD
VP, Chemistry
Andrea Testa, PhD
VP, Chemistry
Andrea is an innovator and expert in the chemistry of targeted protein degraders.
He is a scientific co-founder of Amphista Therapeutics, a targeted protein degradation company. Andrea worked at Amphista for six years, leading the development of the company’s chemistry platform, which delivered oral and CNS penetrant degraders that recruit novel E3 ligases, with demonstrated potential for therapeutic development.
Andrea started his work in targeted protein degradation as a postdoctoral researcher in 2015, joining the research group of Prof. Alessio Ciulli, at the University of Dundee, UK.
Andrea graduated from the University of Aberdeen with a PhD in medical imaging and he has an MS in chemical sciences from the University of Milan.
Dean Clift, PhD
Senior Director, Biology
Dean Clift, PhD
Senior Director, Biology
Dean obtained his PhD from the University of Edinburgh.
Dean carried out his early postdoctoral research at the LMB in Cambridge ,UK with Dr Melina Schuh, Group Leader, where he invented Trim-AwayTM technology, which utilises off-the-shelf antibodies and the natural function of intracellular antibody receptor and E3 ubiquitin ligase TRIM21 to rapidly degrade endogenous cellular proteins.
Dean then worked with Dr Leo James, LMB to elucidate the mechanism of TRIM21 activation, before moving to TRIMTECH to exploit this mechanism to develop new therapeutics that selectively degrade pathogenic protein aggregates.
Julia Jones
Fractional CFO
Julia Jones
Fractional CFO
After graduating from Loughborough University in 1997, Julia joined PricewaterhouseCoopers and qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 2001. Julia then gained a broad range of experience with key finance positions in Industry.
For the last 18 years, as the founder and Managing Director of Archangel Accounting Ltd, Julia has provided tailor-made services to many companies, including IPO and fundraising support.
Julia has 26 years of experience as a Finance Professional with an established record of supporting biotech companies from start up through to exit, assisting in securing and then the management of circa £200mil of Venture Capital funds, strong skills in software implementation and accounting processes to aid the performance of ambitious businesses.
Alison Lawton
Independent Chair
Alison Lawton
Independent Chair
Alison Lawton is an executive leader with over 35 years of experience in the biopharma industry. She was president and CEO of Kaleido Biosciences (KLDO) where she led its IPO, and prior to that chief operating officer of Aura Biosciences (AURA). Ms. Lawton spent more than 20 years in various positions of increasing responsibility at Genzyme, and subsequently at Sanofi (following the acquisition of Genzyme by Sanofi in 2011) including as General Manager of Genzyme Biosurgery (a ~$1Billion annual revenue business) and as senior vice president of Global Market Access & Regulatory Affairs for Genzyme.
Alison currently serves as Chair of the Board of Directors for Dianthus Therapeutics (DNTH); as an independent director for ProQR Therapeutics (PRQR) and BlueRock Therapeutics. She previously served as Chair of the board for Magenta Therapeutics (MGTA), and as a non-executive director of Aeglea (AGLE), Kaleido Biosciences (KLDO), Verastem (VSTM), CoLucid (CLCD) until its acquisition by Eli Lilly, and Cubist Pharmaceuticals (CBST) until its acquisition by Merck & Co. She was Chair of the Board of the Regulatory Affairs Professional Society and the industry representative on the FDA Cell and Gene Therapy Advisory Committee.
Founders and Advisors
Leo James, PhD FRS
Chief Scientific Adviser
Leo James, PhD FRS
Chief Scientific Adviser
Leo has led a multidisciplinary team at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology for ~20 years, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society.
His lab discovered the cytosolic antibody receptor and E3 ligase TRIM21, defining its mechanism of action and physiological roles in animal disease models. Leo translates his research into tools and technologies, filing multiple patents in the area of targeted protein degradation, including the technology Trim-Away, a degradation method that uses off-the-shelf antibodies to rapidly degrade cellular proteins. His mission is to translate this and related technologies into proteopathic disease therapeutics.
Will McEwan, PhD
Chief Scientific Adviser
Will McEwan, PhD
Chief Scientific Adviser
Will is a group leader at UK Dementia Research Institute, University of Cambridge.
His group is pioneering the use of antiviral mechanisms to clear protein aggregates in neurodegenerative diseases. They recently repurposed TRIM21 to clear tau aggregates from animal models of tauopathy (Mukadam et al., Science 2023 and Benn et al., Science 2024).
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