Our Board

Dr Robin Brown

Chairman

Robin was appointed Chairman of the Medicines Discovery Catapult in July 2018.

Most recently he was the Chief Executive Officer of KWS BioTest, a specialist immunology-based contract research organisation. In January 2018 KWS was acquired by Charles River Laboratories. Immediately before joining KWS, Robin spent eight years as a venture partner at Advent Healthcare Ventures (US) and was responsible for the scientific direction and corporate governance of a number of companies within the investment portfolios.

Prior to this he was the Chief Scientific Officer of Devgen (acquired by Syngenta) and Galapagos NV. Dr Brown also spent nine years at GSK, latterly as Head of Cell Biology and as an academic gained his PhD in the laboratory of Professor Alan Hall at the Institute of Cancer Research, London. He undertook postdoctoral work in the United States (Harvard) and London (Ludwig Institute).

• LinkedIn

Professor Chris Molloy

Executive Director

Professor Chris Molloy has a 30-year international board and executive career across a unique range of life sciences R&D disciplines.

His career began in preclinical research at Glaxo, where he was closely involved with the industrialisation of high throughput discovery.  In 2004 he moved to Asia as COO of MerLion Pharmaceuticals, a Singaporean biotech that developed into an award-winning multinational anti-infectives R&D biotech.  Chris then ran corporate development for the global informatics firm, idbs during which time it won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise, became a Fast-track 100 company, and the first UK firm to develop a stratified medicine software platform using real-world health data.

Chris spent three years as CEO of the RSA Group, the global life science executive search specialist before in 2016 becoming the founding CEO of Medicines Discovery Catapult (MDC); the national centre for innovation in drug discovery.  During its first five years, under Chris’ leadership MDC has leveraged its Innovate UK grant fourfold, worked with over 150 UK companies and assisted the discovery of UK drug assets worth over £1bn.  During the pandemic, Chris was the founding Director of the UK Lighthouse Labs Network – the largest diagnostics project in UK history – and chaired the industry-governmental consortium that increased UK lateral flow manufacturing capacity by twenty-fold.

Chris is the non-executive chairman of Exploristics and NorthWest EHealth: two UK tech companies using Real World healthcare data to improve clinical development.  He chairs the IP Advisory Committee for the Association of Medical Research Charities and the Industry Advisory Board for Manchester’s Biomedical Research Centre & Health Innovation Manchester.  Chris is a Member and Trustee of the Institute of Cancer Research and holds an honorary chair at the University of Manchester.

Chris is responsible for leading an experienced Executive Team and a cohort of over 130 specialists that make up MDC to achieve our vision of reshaping drug discovery for patient benefit.

• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Professor Sir Alex Markham

Board Member

Sir Alex is Professor of Medicine and Director of the MRC Medical Bioinformatics Centre at the University of Leeds. He also works in MRC Centres for Hyperpolarised MRI Imaging and Single-Cell Functional Genomics, as well as an EPSRC Programme on Microfluidic Constructed Architectures for Therapeutic Delivery, in Leeds.

Sir Alex has made many contributions to biomedical research. He initially obtained his PhD and post-doctoral training in medicinal chemistry, was an early pioneer in the fields of molecular biology and genetics, and also trained in medicine, becoming a successful clinical academic.

His commercial experience includes, cancer drug development, medical diagnostics, the incorporation of biotechnology approaches into the drug discovery process, and the introduction of DNA fingerprinting for medico-legal forensic applications (Queen’s Award for Technological Achievement in 1990).

Sir Alex was the first substantive Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK, from its formation until 2008. During that period, CRUK became the world’s largest, fund-raising medical research charity. A Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, he served as Chairman of the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI), establishing the National Cancer Intelligence Network, and has been a member of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration Board and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Advisory Board.

He has chaired many MRC and Wellcome Trust Funding and Strategic Advisory Committees and was Senior Scientific Trustee of Arthritis Research UK. He chaired the Translational Medicine Board for MRC and NIHR, under the auspices of the Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research (OSCHR), setting in place the MRC Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme and the NIHR Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation Programme.

Sir Alex was Senior Responsible Owner for the NIHR Research Capability Programme in Health Informatics, helped establish the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) and now chairs a national OSCHR Health Informatics Group. He is also chairman of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine.

He received a Knighthood in the 2008 New Year’s Honours for services to medicine. He is a non-executive director of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and a member of the Department of Health’s current Accelerated Access Review Advisory Group. Sir Alex also contributes to numerous European and global oncology initiatives, including chairing the International Group that recently established the German Consortium for Translational Cancer Research.

Alistair Macdonald

Board Member

Alistair is Chief Executive Officer at Syneos Health and has over 20 years experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. He currently serves as the Chair of the Association of Clinical Research Organisations.

Prior to Syneos Health, he served as CEO of INC Research since 2016, leading global operations, driving the company’s global expansion, overall project delivery and implementation of new technologies, processes and solutions.

Alistair joined INC Research in 2002 and served in multiple roles including INC’s Head of Global Business Development and Marketing, Head of Alliances Development and Delivery teams, head of Global Oncology, and President of Clinical Development Services. He has held management positions in the pharmaceutical industry across manufacturing, consultancy, business and corporate development, data management, and clinical operations.

Alistair has a Master of Science in Environmental Diagnostics from Cranfield University, a Bachelor of Science (Honors) in Applied Geology from Plymouth Polytechnic, and a Diploma from the UK Institute of Directors.

Professor Carole Longson MBE

Board Member

Carole is responsible for leading the Research, Medical and Innovation function at the ABPI with a remit to shape and develop UK pharmaceutical science policy and to ensure that the UK remains at the forefront of innovation in medicines research, development and manufacturing now and into the future.

Carole brings significant research, academic and pharmaceutical industry experience to the role, including seven years as a Research Lead at GlaxoSmithKline R&D.

She has extensive experience of directing multidisciplinary life sciences research programmes, managing large scientific departments and collaborating on multinational research grants.

Carole was a past member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), the leading pan-European public- private partnership which funds health research and innovation. She also holds non-Executive Director and advisory roles in other scientific endeavours in the UK and abroad. These positions have given her a unique and extensive perspective on the changing face of industry.

Carole has unparalleled insight into the fast evolving medicines pipeline having spent the past 18 years at NICE where she has pioneered and led the organisation’s technology appraisal programme. Carole is highly respected as a leader in HTA both in the UK and internationally and was formerly President of Health Technology Assessment International.

Throughout her career and role at NICE, Carole has gained valuable understanding of how the public and private sector must continue to collaborate to meet the shared aims of ensuring medical innovation benefits patients in the UK.

• LinkedIn

Professor Chris Reilly

Board Member

Chris is an expert on the discovery and early clinical development of new medicines. He was formerly Global Vice President and Head of Project Evaluation at AstraZeneca (AZ) where he made investment recommendations on all lead identification and optimisation projects across all research areas. Chris was also responsible for developing AZ’s research strategy and was involved in selecting compounds for clinical development.

Chris previously worked at Merck (USA) and at the venture capital arm of Advent International (Boston).

Chris’s passion is turning innovative science into viable businesses. Today, Chris advises biotechnology companies, life science VCs, universities, individual academics and government agencies on drug-hunting, translational medicine, business opportunities and investments. He was on the Wellcome Trust Seeding Drug Discovery Triage Committee and was a biology panel member on the 2014 REF review of university research in the UK. He is also Non-Executive Director at the Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust that provides acute and community care for the people of Salford and aspects of secondary and tertiary care across Greater Manchester and the UK.

Graham Clarke

Board Member

Graham holds a number of non-executive positions including:

• Non-Executive member of the Department of Health and Social Care (“DHSC”), sitting on its Audit & Risk Committee.
• Non-Executive Director of the NHS Health Research Authority (“HRA”), the regulator of human research in England and Wales.
• Chairman of the board at Herts Urgent Care, a Social Enterprise CIC delivering high quality integrated urgent healthcare services to nearly 3 million people across the three counties.

He is also a governing member of the Institute of Cancer Research (“ICR”).

Previously, Graham was CEO of ImmBio Ltd, an immunology biotech in Cambridge, UK. During his 12 years as CEO Graham was instrumental in building a portfolio of development programmes, securing both private venture capital and grants, and establishing a number of partnerships with UK universities and in joint ventures.

Graham’s career has been in healthcare R&D, initially as a researcher and later in senior management positions. He has worked for SmithKline Beecham as VP Strategic Product Development and Glaxo SmithKline as Head of R&D Executive Decision Support.  Subsequently at GE Healthcare, he was VP of Strategy and Business Development for the Life Sciences business.   He also spent some time in consulting, as a partner in PA Consulting Group’s Pharma & Biotech Practice and previously at Deloitte.

Lynne Robb

Board Member

Lynne began her career as a Chartered Accountant when she trained with Arthur Andersen & Co in London and Leeds.  She then moved into the corporate world, working for many years with Tate & Lyle, where she had several Financial leadership roles. She also worked on major integrations and mergers, which led her to join Cancer Research UK at its formation in 2002.  She was Chief Financial Officer for 11 years, leading the technology, risk, finance and Treasury teams. Her interest in change and development meant she was involved in many developments there, including the Francis Crick Institute.

Recently, Lynne has worked with the YMCA, in a strategic support role to the CEO and Board and has taken on a Trustee role in the Tate & Lyle Pension Scheme. Lynne became Treasurer of Prostate Cancer UK in January 2018.

• LinkedIn

Paul Beastall

Board Member

Paul is the nominated Director for Innovate UK on the Board of Medicines Discovery Catapult and was appointed in 2022.  He is an engineer who has spent his career working at the interface between technical innovation and successful business, working with organisations from multinational corporations to venture-funded start-ups.

Prior to moving to build a portfolio career, Paul was a member of the Executive team at Cambridge Consultants, an outsourced R&D and technology strategy consultancy, part of Capgemini Group. Prior to that, he held a leadership role in PA Consulting’s Technology Practice.

He is currently Chair of Evonetix, a scale-up developing new instruments to allow the benchtop synthesis of custom DNA directly in researchers’ own laboratories, and Chair of HutanBio, a start-up that is looking to revolutionise the world of transportation through highly robust and innovate algal biofuels that will be grown in the tropical regions.

Paul is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. He has a Master of Engineering from the University of York.

Sue Wallcraft

Board Member

Sue is a qualified English solicitor and has over 25 years’ experience of advising life sciences companies and charities.

Most recently Sue was General Counsel and Company secretary at Vernalis plc, having previously held the same positions at the Wellcome Trust.

Sue’s career also includes holding the position of Assistant General Counsel for Pfizer’s primary Care Business in Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand

Sue began her career at CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang LLP in the City where she did her training and then practised Corporate law for several years before taking up her first in house role as UK Legal Director for Warner-Lambert.

Sue has been a Trustee of Amnesty International Charity Limited since 2017.

Robert Sherville-Payne

Company Secretary

With a professional legal and compliance background and over 25 years of commercial experience, Robert brings significant expertise as a solicitor to his role as General Counsel and Company Secretary at Medicines Discovery Catapult.

Having trained and worked at law firm Hogan Lovells in London, Robert spent 14 years at AstraZeneca in a range of legal roles focused on all aspects of drug discovery, development, operations and legal risk management. Robert subsequently moved on to leadership legal and compliance roles at BUPA, BAE Systems and other corporate and SME organisations, before joining MDC as General Counsel and Company Secretary in May 2022.

Having created and led legal and business focussed teams within life science and broader industrial sectors, Robert has driven improved governance and decision-making practices. Robert brings detailed experience of legal risk, corporate governance and risk management , combined with an understanding of the critical need to harness these tools to enhance financial performance, business development and commercial opportunity.

With responsibility for the Legal function, Board liaison, the Office of the CEO, risk management, Intellectual Property and oversight for MDC’s approach to ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance), Robert is centrally placed to support MDC’s mission of reshaping drug discovery for patient benefit.

• LinkedIn