Management
Chris Torrance has a total of twelve years 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.
He is the co-inventor on a patent describing the use of patient-targeted “isogenic” cell-lines to directly screen for agents that affect specific cancer pathways. As a result of this work, Chris has developed considerable expertise in the generation of isogenic cell-lines and their application to drug discovery.
He is a co-author on nine, high-impact, peer-reviewed papers in the field of oncology and cancer drug discovery. Chris holds a PhD, is married with two sons and is the principle founder of Horizon Discovery.
Darrin M Disley is responsible for corporate development, general operations and investor relations for Horizon Discovery.
Darrin is a serial business entrepreneur and has been involved in the start-up and growth of six 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.
He holds a PhD in Biotechnology from the University of Cambridge; has been the author of six papers, 7 patent applications and 26 conference abstracts and has been an advisor on biotech commercialisation strategies to key technology centres in Europe, USA, India and Africa.
Paul R Morrill is responsible for global business development activities for Horizon Discovery.
Paul was Commercial Director of Acumen Bioscience Limited (ABL). He had previously held positions of Director of Marketing at ABL and Business Development Manager at The Technology Partnership.
Over the past 18 years, Paul has developed a strong track record in business and commercial development including the closing of multi-million pound capital equipment & reagent deals with premier pharmaceutical and diagnostic industry players. He holds a PhD in Biotechnology from the University of Cambridge.
Rob Howes has over 10 years experience in Oncology research and development. Most recently he has led a project team developing inhibitors of an important Oncology-targeted kinase. This drug candidate was taken from target identification through to its current phase of preclinical development.
He holds a PhD in Biology from the University of Cambridge and held post-doc positions at Stanford University, California and University of Cambridge, UK. Rob joined Cambridge-based pharmaceutical company Vernalis in 2001 where he headed the screening department whose activities covered biochemical and cell-based screening, as well as in-vitro ADME.
Rob is the author of 15 peer-reviewed papers, many of which were on small molecule drug discovery and has spoken at many international conferences with a focus on assay development and screening of oncology targets.
Advisors
Prof. Bardelli is an internationally renowned scientist in the field of cancer genetics and the modelling of this disease using isogenic cell-lines. His lab has published over 50 papers in the field, including high-impact journals such as Nature and Science.
Prof. Bardelli and his laboratory at the Institute for Cancer research and Treatment (IRCC) in Turin, Italy, have pioneered the generation of isogenic cell-line harbouring subtle kinase mutations and is now showing that they accurately predict responses to appropriately targeted agents in humans.Prof. Bardelli is married with a son and daughter and is the principle scientific advisor to Horizon Discovery.
Execute is engaged in consulting and new venture activities in the Life Sciences field and is a founding shareholder in three new ventures. It is also a minor shareholder in a number of other biotech businesses including Horizon Discovery.
The Execute team combines management experience in the areas of technical innovation, scientific research, product development and manufacturing, sales, strategic marketing, marketing communications, technology distribution and corporate finance.
Execute is providing Horizon Discovery with advice on sales, marketing and business development strategies and provision of access to a 10,000 strong customer network in academia, biotech and pharma.