The members of the “Advisory Team” come from the University of Manchester and The University of Manchester Incubator Company (UMIC) respectively.
It is headed by Professor Ken Douglas at the University of Manchester along with their commercial partner UMIC.
Ken Douglas has been Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Manchester since 1987. He also works closely with academic research groups in Japan and Russia, and with various industrial laboratories in Europe and the UK. His research takes a multidisciplinary approach to rational development of new drug leads, primarily in parasitic diseases and cancer and in the application of modern medicinal chemistry approaches to the rational basis of novel molecular diagnostics. His laboratory uses both proteins and nucleic acids as targets for lead ligand design, followed by synthesis and evaluation for target inhibition/binding. Expertise includes protein modelling, novel ligand design (computation and synthesis), enzymology, fast reaction techniques, DNA and RNA chemistry, high-field NMR spectroscopy of novel DNA structures and of DNA: ligand complexes. He has published over 200 refereed papers plus a number of patent filings in these areas. This research is supported by the Wellcome Trust, the EPSRC, BBSRC , University Proof of Concept funds, and the Wolfson Foundation (a new Centre for the Rational Design of Molecular Diagnostics of which he is the Director)
Ken has a BA, MA & PhD in Chemistry. Awards include the Royal Society of Chemistry’s industrially sponsored 2002 Silver Medal for Medicinal Chemistry, the Sir Hans Sloane Medal (1966), the Matsumae International Medal and Fellowship to Japan (1983) and the Pittsburgh Spectroscopic Society’s College Award (1976). He has been Honorary Professor at Nagasaki University and Visiting Professor at Université de Paris-Sud and Université Paul-Sabatier in France.
Professor Bill Dawson has over 30 years experience in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry having been Research Director for Eli Lilly on the UK site for 14 years and then Director of Technology Acquisition for Eli Lilly in Europe.
He is an advisory board member of Andersen Piquet, the specialist, international executive resourcing firm serving select clients in the healthcare and life sciences markets. He is also a non-executive director and scientific advisory board member of a number of start-up biotech companies. He is a Council Member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, has worked extensively with the Research Councils in the UK over many years and is a visiting Professor to Sheffield Hallam University.
He has a first degree in pharmacy and a PhD in pharmacology.
Martino Picardo has a PhD in Biochemistry and spent 4 years at Baylor College Of Medicine, Houston, Texas, in cardiovascular research. Martino joined Amersham International (now part of GE Healthcare) in 1991 and initially worked on developing HTS assays using Scintillation Proximity Assays (SPA). He went on to manage the R&D Technology Transfer Group, based in Cardiff. Following the merger of Amersham with Pharmacia Biotech in 1997, Martino became the Science Director for the Cardiff site before becoming a Business Manager for Manchester Innovation in June 1999. More recently, he has been involved in BioIncubation (managing the Incubator Facility, negotiating with prospective tenants and obtaining Capital Funds for phase II expansion, the Core Technology Facility) see www.umic.co.uk. Martino has also been involved in the establishment of new Biotech ventures and licensing technology in the Neurosciences (Motac Neuroscience Ltd.), cell biology (Epistem Ltd) and Instrumentation Platform (Multiplex Photonics Ltd.) business sectors.
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