Mr. David Evans

Non-Executive Chairman

David is an entrepreneurial accountant who has been involved in Diagnostics and Life Sciences at an Executive and Non-Executive level over the past 18 years. He has an established track-record of success across a number of different companies including BBI, IDS and DxS.

Dr. Darrin M Disley

Chief Executive Officer

Dr Darrin M Disley is the CEO of Horizon Discovery Ltd. and is responsible for corporate development, business strategy and investor relations.

Darrin is a parallel business entrepreneur and has been involved in the start-up and growth of ten high-tech business ventures. He is an experienced general manager with a track-record for raising investment for and managing the growth of early-stage technology companies.

Darrin holds a PhD in Biotechnology from the University of Cambridge; has been the author of six papers, 7 patent applications and 32 conference abstracts and; has been an advisor on biotech commercialisation strategies to key technology centres in Europe, USA, India and Africa.

Dr. Chris Torrance

Chief Scientific Officer

Dr. Chris Torrance has significant oncology research and development experience, including six years as a senior manager at Cambridge-based pharmaceutical company, Vernalis. His principle expertise lies is cancer cell biology and drug discovery. In this field, he has led project teams taking drug targets from inception through to hit identification, lead optimisation and into preclinical studies.

Chris is the co-inventor on a patent describing the use of “isogenic” X-MAN™ cell-lines to directly screen for agents that affect specific cancer pathways. As a result of this work, he has developed considerable expertise in the generation of X-MAN™ cell-lines and their application to drug discovery.

Chris is a co-author on nine, high-impact, peer-reviewed papers in the field of oncology and cancer drug discovery. Chris holds a PhD from East Carolina University, U.S.A. and completed a Post-Doctoral position in the world renowned oncology lab of Professor Bert Vogelstein (Johns Hopkins University) where he pioneered the use of X-MAN™ cancer models in high-throughput screening and drug discovery.

Chris is the principle founder of Horizon Discovery Ltd.

Mr. Dan Cowell

Chief Operations Officer

Dan Cowell has over 15 years research and management experience in the contract research and biotechnology industry. In his roles at Oxford Diversity, Cambridge Combinatorial, Cambridge Material Science and Millennium Pharmaceuticals he was involved in 'hit to lead' discovery and the investigation of new technologies in the areas of automation, high-throughput catalysis, pharmaceutical solid form and lead generation.

In 2003 Dan co-founded Pharmorphix, a specialist CRO in the area of solid form, which grew market share rapidly and was subsequently acquired by Sigma Aldrich in 2006. Following the sale of Pharmorphix he founded Hypoxium, based on the principle of a client focused CRO. Hypoxium grew its revenues at over 75% a year and established itself as a trusted provider of pre-clinical oncology research.

Following the acquisition of Hypoxium by Horizon Discovery in 2010, Dan was appointed as Chief Operating Officer of Horizon Discovery Ltd.

Mr. Peter Keen

Chief Financial Officer

Peter is a chartered accountant with more than 26 years’ experience in the financing and management of biotechnology companies. Peter has a notable track record in the UK biotechnology sector and until March 2010 was corporate development and finance director of the private biotechnology company Serentis Ltd. He was co-founder and finance director of Chiroscience Group plc after which he helped establish the venture capital firm Merlin Biosciences Limited, where he was responsible for a number of early stage investments including Arakis Ltd, Ark Therapeutics Group plc, Cyclacel, ReNeuron plc and Vectura Group plc. On leaving Merlin he became chief financial officer of Arakis Limited, leading a £29m fund raising and then a successful trade sale in 2005; he then became a partner with the technology venture firm DFJ Esprit LLP before joining ex colleagues at Serentis.

Peter has sat on numerous company and advisory Boards and is currently chairman at Oval Medical Technologies Ltd and Exosect Ltd, the senior independent director at Abcam plc and a non-executive director of Ark Therapeutics Group plc and the Biotech Growth Trust plc.

Mr. Simon Cook

Non-Executive Director

Simon is currently CEO of DFJ Esprit. He has been involved with a number of successful technology start-ups, and has been associated with European Venture Capital since 1995. Past board roles include Lovefilm (Amazon), Cambridge Silicon Radio (IPO LSE), Virata (IPO Nasdaq), nCipher (IPO LSE) and KVS (Symantec).

Simon is a graduate of University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST).

Dr. Jonathan Milner

Non-Executive Director

Jonathan Milner is an experienced entrepreneur and business leader with a background in genetic research. He gained his doctorate in Molecular Genetics at Leicester University after graduating in Applied Biology at Bath University. From 1992 to 1995 he was a postdoctoral researcher at Bath University, following which he worked at the University of Cambridge in the laboratory of Professor Tony Kouzarides studying cancer, specifically the BRCA2 gene in hereditary breast cancer.

Whilst in research Jonathan identified the market opportunity for supplying high quality antibodies to support protein interaction studies. In 1998, Jonathan founded the internet-based business Abcam, with David Cleevely and Professor Tony Kouzarides, to supply the rapidly growing market for antibodies and related products.

Jonathan is an active supporter of the Cambridge business community. He is chairman of Cambridge Temperature Concepts (CTC), a medical device company with a platform technology in wireless temperature sensing. CTC’s first product is an accurate system for ovulation monitoring. Jonathan is also a non-executive director of Horizon Discovery Ltd.

Dr. Martin Murphy

Non-Executive Director

Martin is a member of the MVM Life Sciences Partners team and joined them in 2002. He was previously a member of the healthcare investment team at 3i. Prior to that, he was an Engagement Manager with McKinsey & Company based in London and Mumbai. Martin has a degree in Biochemistry from Oxford University and completed a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology at Cambridge before going on to postdoctoral work in Paris.

Martin is a member of the boards of Heptares Therapeutics Ltd., Pulmagen Therapeutics Ltd., and Vantia Ltd. He was previously a director of Healthcare Brands International Ltd. and PregLem SA.