Dr. Newton was appointed to BioFocus in 2005. Between 2000 and 2005, he was a founding scientist, CSO and Board Director at Argenta Discovery Ltd. From 1979 to 2000, he held a variety of senior management positions in both research and development in the Rhone-Poulenc group of companies, working on a variety of projects, many of which reached clinical trials, and one (temozolomide, Temodal®) is now on the market with Schering Plough. Dr. Newton holds a degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge and is Emeleus chemistry prize holder of that university. He earned his PhD at the University of Sheffield in 1979, for which he was awarded the Turner Prize. Dr. Newton has been appointed to visiting academic fellowships and professorships associated with the University of Warwick (1994-1998) and the University of Essex (1995-1999) during his industrial career.

Mr. Phillips joined BioFocus in 2004 from The Automation Partnership where he held the position of VP, Sales and Marketing. Prior to this he has worked for Argenta Discovery Ltd. and has extensive experience in biotechnology start-up companies. Mr. Phillips graduated from London University with a degree in Pharmacology and spent 15 years in Sales & Marketing with Glaxo. He has developed global experience in business development dealing with pharmaceutical companies in the USA, Europe and Japan.

Dr. Angus MacLeod heads BioFocus DPI’s medicinal chemistry research, including the synthetic chemistry, computational chemistry and ADME teams. Before joining BioFocus DPI in 2006, Dr. MacLeod was with Merck Sharp & Dohme where he spent 21 years in medicinal chemistry, most recently as Senior Director, Medicinal Chemistry. Dr. MacLeod has one of the most impressive track records in the industry having contributed to a number of programs that produced clinical candidates, including the Substance P antagonist program, serotonin antagonist projects, and a GABA receptor modulator program. He is author/inventor on more than 100 publications and patents.

Dr. Kate Hilyard leads the biology activities at BioFocus DPI, encompassing target discovery and assay development and screening. Dr. Hilyard has 12 years industrial experience with pharma and biotech, including Hoffmann-La Roche and most recently Cambridge Antibody Technology, where she was Director of Discovery Biology. She has significant experience in drug discovery in inflammatory and infectious diseases, particularly kinase drug discovery, having led multiple cross-functional discovery teams that covered the whole of the discovery process from target discovery through to clinical candidate selection. Dr. Hilyard has a D.Phil from Oxford University and undertook post-doctoral studies in molecular immunology at Harvard University.