Our experts have experience working in large pharma and biotech SMEs and work in a range of disease and therapy areas. Our project delivery spans programmes developing traditional small molecules, biological medicines such as oligonucleotide and antibody therapeutics and nanoparticle delivery systems.
Our expertise covers drug discovery from target validation to candidate nomination and beyond. We partner with innovators to provide:
- Drug discovery and disease area advice, insight, critique, and review
- Development of detailed, actionable project plans and target product profiles
- Access to in-house capabilities from our discovery laboratory and informatics teams and through our CRO relationships
Discover, Develop, Deliver
Whether you require support for one element of your drug discovery project or support across all stages, we offer a proven approach designed to support you. We aim to deliver value and enable drug discovery progression by providing:
- Rapid, independent diligence of programmes throughout the drug discovery process
- Agile, industry-relevant R&D project plans to support IP generation
- Best practice in modern medicines R&D processes
Discover the Challenge
- Helping to evaluate the key questions, problems and ideas in your drug discovery challenge
Develop the Strategy
- Working with you to develop a roadmap to success with key milestones, including Line of Sight (LoS) to the clinic, evaluation of risks and assumptions
Delivery in Partnership
- Ensuring successful delivery by working with MDC’s scientific capabilities, or through our CRO and expert partners
Challenges We Can Help With
From idea to drug candidate, and all the questions in between. We can help answer critical questions relevant to your discovery drug project:
Reshaping Medicines Discovery...
It's ambitious, it's achievable
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By tapping into MDC’s unique drug development expertise and facilities, we are confident we will accelerate the preclinical development of our drug delivery system and its commercialisation.
Dr Anna Perdrix Rosell
Co-founder and Managing Director, Sixfold Bioscience
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MDC’s Virtual R&D team is a fantastic resource to give you a different angle on your company or your business idea. We certainly tapped into the expertise over in England to make sure that we were on point and on track.
Prof Helen McCarthy
Chief Executive, pHion Therapeutics (based in Ireland)
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Working with MDC has provided expertise and intellectual input. It has also enabled access to a wider network of companies providing specialist services.
Dr David Templeton
Technical Director, N4 Pharma
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It has been great to access the Artificial Intelligence expertise at Medicines Discovery Catapult, the team have taken an innovative approach that adds value to our product and will benefit our customers. Our collaboration was easy to establish and worked extremely well.
Phil Jones
CSO, BioAscent
Our Experts
Dr Graeme Wilkinson
Head of Virtual R&D
Dr Graeme Wilkinson
Head of Virtual R&D
Graeme is Head of Virtual R&D at Medicines Discovery Catapult.
A pharmacologist by training, and with over 25 years of experience in the industry, Graeme has a track record of successfully leading drug discovery and capability enhancement projects in large pharma and start-up across many disease areas. In addition, Graeme has also significant experience in instigating and leading open innovation, and drug repositioning programmes.
Sarah Brockbank
Strategy Leader - Complex Medicines
Sarah Brockbank
Strategy Leader - Complex Medicines
Sarah Brockbank leads the strategy for Complex Medicines at Medicines Discovery Catapult.
In this role she draws on internal expertise and the external environment, through membership of national programmes and a portfolio of client projects, to develop and implement a core strategy for complex medicines that is responsive to the needs of this emerging area.
Sarah has 35 years’ of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. She is a molecular biologist with a focus mainly in target identification & validation and has worked across a broad range of disease areas. Sarah was a Drug Discovery Project Leader at AstraZeneca, and she also has extensive experience in the leadership and management of large public-private consortia and collaborations.
Dr Sally-Ann Emmas
Lead Scientist
Dr Sally-Ann Emmas
Lead Scientist
Sally-Ann is a highly experienced scientist and project leader with over 25 years of experience in Research and Development.
Her expertise covers diagnostic and pharmaceutical fields, with experience in pre-clinical and clinical development across different disciplines, with a focus on translational research.
Following a PhD in surgical research, Sally-Ann joined GE Healthcare in 1999 as a biologist to develop and subsequently lead projects developing new diagnostic imaging agents. In 2007, she joined AstraZeneca to lead a team (initially in the UK and then globally) evaluating translational imaging biomarkers with the aim of providing earlier clinical readouts to accelerate drug development. In 2016 Sally-Ann joined Tangerine Holdings to lead Research and Development to support their existing product portfolio and drive new product development.
She has over 40 publications, 1 book chapter, 8 invited presentations and 10 published patents.
Sally-Ann joined the Medicines Discovery Catapult in 2021 as part of the Virtual Research and Development team to help SMEs develop their strategies and re-disk their programmes.
Dr Kirsty Winn
Project Lead
Dr Kirsty Winn
Project Lead
Kirsty Winn is a cell biologist and pharmacologist experienced in early drug discovery and lead generation.
Kirsty joined MDC in 2020 as an External Drug Discovery Project Lead; responsible for providing drug discovery advice, scientific due diligence and robust research plans alongside UK medicines discovery innovators. Prior to MDC Kirsty led integrated drug discovery programmes for a large CRO, and before that worked for 15 years in large Pharma. As a leader in AstraZeneca’s Global HTS group, Kirsty was responsible for delivering hit generation strategies, assay and technology development and leading external alliances and innovation partnerships.
Our Capabilities and Technologies
Speak to Us
We can help support you with your next drug discovery project.