Dr David Witty has more than 20 years experience in the pharmaceutical industry as a medicinal chemist and project leader working principally in areas of anti-infectives, metabolic diseases, cognition and pain, delivering clinical candidates for several conditions. He led IT Strategy within the Neurology division of GSK, developing and deploying the first Electronic Notebooks for drug discovery to sites in the UK and Singapore. He has contributed more than 90 scientific papers, reviews, patents and books on medicinal and synthetic chemistry.In 2010 David and several colleagues successfully raised $35M in venture funding to found Convergence Pharmaceuticals, a specialist ion channel company focused on the development of novel treatments for pain, based in Cambridge UK. David presently leads their discovery programme and manages scientific operations within the business.David is chairman of the Fine Chemicals Group of the Society of Chemical Industry, with responsibility for the delivery of conferences, seminars and training courses for chemists throughout the UK and Europe, and advising parliamentary bodies on matters of relevance to the UK chemical industry.Since 2008 David has been a STEM ambassador for SETPOINT, introducing school students at both primary and secondary level to the excitement and possibilities of pursuing scientific careers, through workshops, lectures and competitions. Professor Brian Cox is at University of Sussex, Brighton, UK Jonathan Bentley is a VP, Scientific Director at Evotec in the Discovery Chemistry department in Abingdon UK. He is responsible for the scientific strategy on multiple collaborations and provides strategic leadership and support for scientific delivery across multi-disciplinary drug discovery programs. Within Evotec, he leads the cross-functional global Design Evolution initiative. He joined Evotec as a Project Leader in 2007 and was promoted to VP in 2020. Prior to Evotec, he was a Research Leader at the Psychiatry Centre of Excellence in Drug Design for GSK, Verona for 3.5 years after spending the formative phase of his industrial career at Vernalis in Reading, UK for 7 years. He has contributed to the identification of multiple clinical and preclinical candidates as project leader, or as part of multidisciplinary drug discovery teams in collaboration with international scientific and strategic partners. He has a PhD in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from the University of Bristol, sponsored by SmithKline Beecham (1995). He spent a year in a post-doctoral position at University of Cape Town, supported by Schering AG (1995-6). He has worked on projects across many different therapeutic areas including Oncology, Inflammation, Pain, CNS (Anxiety, Depression, Drug Dependence, Schizophrenia, Insomnia, Neurodegeneration), Metabolic Diseases and Women‘s Health. He has enjoyed working on multiple target classes including agonists, antagonists, PAMs and NAMs of GPCRs from all classes, diverse enzyme inhibitors and activators, and ion channel blockers, openers, and modulators, as well as phenotypic endpoints. He was the first recipient of the RSC / SCI Capps-Green-Zomaya award in 2004. Tilly (Matilda) Bingham is a drug discoverer with over 20 years’ experience of working in the pharmaceutical R&D sector in ‘large pharma’ (Organon, Schering-Plough, MSD), Biotech (Redx Pharma), CRO (Concept Life Sciences) and is currently Executive in Residence at Cumulus Oncology. Tilly’s early career was spent working as a medicinal chemist in CNS therapeutic areas where her research focussed on design strategies for getting small molecule therapeutics across the blood brain barrier for targets including the GPCRs OX2R, V1R and CGRP. Then, as Head of Research and Operations at Redx Pharma she oversaw the discovery and development of oncology and fibrosis clinical candidates, including the clinical candidate porcupine inhibitors RXC004 (oncology), RXC006 (AZD5055, fibrosis), Pan RAF inhibitor (JZP815) and FDA approved BTK inhibitor Pirtobrutinib. As VP Science and Chief Scientific Officer at the UK CRO Concept Life Sciences she oversaw multiple research programmes and the development of new research capability across the group. In her current role as Executive in Residence at Cumulus Oncology Tilly is employing her significant expertise in pre-clinical drug discovery to accelerate oncology innovation to key value inflection points.
