Our people

LifeArc’s CEO Dr Melanie Lee, PhD, CBE. Prior to joining LifeArc Melanie pursued a 30 year career in healthcare R&D and gained leadership experience both from the biopharmaceutical industry and from the medical research charity sector.  Melanie’s previous roles have included Chief Scientific Officer at BTG (most recently) as well as senior positions at GSK, Celltech and UCB.  She has previously held Trustee appointments at Cancer Research Technology and Cancer Research UK and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Sanofi.

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General Counsel and Company Secretary. Edward also manages our Licensing team.

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Justin runs our drug discovery and antibody engineering groups at the Centre for Therapeutics Discovery who work on small molecule and antibody projects.

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Mike heads up the Centre for Diagnostics Development (CDD), LifeArc’s translational activity seeking to develop novel diagnostic tests from cutting edge basic research. In addition, Mike is leading the creation of a scientific foresighting function at LifeArc to identify future charitable investment areas in translation and runs a small scientific due diligence team that assists the company in new project assessment and acquisition.

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Andrew leads the team responsible for identifying, protecting and progressing promising life science research to improve human health.

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Andrew manages our Finance department, and also oversees our IT service.

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Philanthropic Fund Manager

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David Holbrook is Head of Seed Funds at Lifearc. 

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Pauline is Investment Principal, LifeArc Seed Fund at LifeArc

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Andrew leads the team responsible for identifying, protecting and progressing promising life science research to improve human health.

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John heads a team responsible for identifying early stage targets, small molecules and monoclonal antibodies for our drug discovery group and the licensing of mature programmes to industry.

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Roberto is responsible for identifying early stage targets, small molecules and monoclonal antibodies for our drug discovery group and the licensing of mature programmes to industry.

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Kevin is responsible for identifying early stage targets, small molecules and monoclonal antibodies for our drug discovery group and the licensing of mature programmes to industry.

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Derek is responsible for identifying early stage targets, small molecules and monoclonal antibodies for our drug discovery group and the licensing of mature programmes to industry.

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Zhang is responsible for identifying early stage targets, small molecules and monoclonal antibodies for our drug discovery group and the licensing of mature programmes to industry, particularly in China.

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Ciaran manages the diagnostics group which helps develop early stage diagnostic tests at our Centre for Diagnostics Development based in Edinburgh.

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Mike heads up the Centre for Diagnostics Development (CDD), LifeArc’s translational activity seeking to develop novel diagnostic tests from cutting edge basic research. In addition, Mike is leading the creation of a scientific foresighting function at LifeArc to identify future charitable investment areas in translation and runs a small scientific due diligence team that assists the company in new project assessment and acquisition.

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Justin runs our drug discovery and antibody engineering groups at the Centre for Therapeutics Discovery who work on small molecule and antibody projects.

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Katy is an Associate Director in LifeArc’s Centre for Therapeutics Discovery. She manages a team of biologists carrying out assay development and screening.

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David heads up the BioTherapeutics team. The group develops therapeutic antibodies, this includes antibody generation, humanisation, affinity maturation and biophysical characterisation of candidates.

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Andy manages a team of medicinal, analytical and computational chemists who carry out early stage drug discovery, including hit-to-lead development at our Centre for Therapeutics Discovery.

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Andrew leads the team responsible for identifying, protecting and progressing promising life science research to improve human health.

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Rachael works as part of the team delivering the LifeArc Philanthropic Fund, is Development Gap Fund Manager and provides technology transfer services to the LMB PNAC (shared).

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Georgia covers LMB Cell Biology, LMB PNAC (shared), LMB Neurobiology (shared) and MRC Mitchondrial Biology Unit (shared).

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Sam covers LMB Neurobiology Division, Mammalian Genetics Unit,  Mary Lyons Centre (MRC Harwell).

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Madhu looks after IP issues for our charity partners.

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Anji manages all IP, contractual and technology transfer matters arising from the MRC Prion Unit.

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Steven covers Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine (MMC & HGU) and MRC Clincal Sciences Centre (shared).

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Alex works with researchers in the Neurobiology and Protein and Nucleic Acid Chemistry divisions of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology.

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