Professor Mark Wilcox
Professor Mark Wilcox is a Consultant Microbiologist, Head of Microbiology, and Clinical Director of Pathology, at the Leeds Teaching Hospitals, Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of Leeds, and is the lead on Clostridium difficile infection for the Health Protection Agency Regional Microbiology Network in England. He was the Scientific Chairman of the 2002 Hospital Infection Society International Conference and is a former Secretary of the Hospital Infection Society, Assistant Editor of the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy and member of Council of the British Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. He is a member of the Department of Health's Antimicrobial Resistance and Healthcare Associated Infection (ARHAI) Committee, and is an advisor to the UK Healthcare Commission, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the EPIC project on infection control issues, the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) programme on Healthcare Associated Infection, and the European Centre for Disease Control. He is a member of UK, European and US working groups on Clostridium difficile infection. His research projects include several areas of healthcare associated infection, in particular Clostridium difficile infection, staphylococcal infection, and the clinical development of new antimicrobial agents. He has authored more than 230 papers and published a number of books and chapters. He is co-editor of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (5th Ed, 2007).
Dr Ian Skidmore
Ian Skidmore trained as a biochemist and has MA and D.Phil degrees from the University of Oxford and gained post-doctoral experience with the Medical Research Council and the US National Institutes of Health. During a thirty year career in the pharmaceutical industry he held significant executive positions within Glaxo and GlaxoWellcome including Vice-President of Development for Glaxo Inc in North Carolina, World-wide Director of Exploratory Development and Director of Drug Discovery for UK/France in GlaxoWellcome. Since retiring from GlaxoWellcome in 2000 he has acted as an independent consultant in Pharmaceutical R&D with particular focus on Drug Discovery and Early Development. He has a range of clients in the biotechnology and pharmaceuticals sector and has consulted for several Venture Capital organisations.
Dr Michael Marriott
Following post-doctoral research at the univeristies of Cambridge (UK) and Regensburg (Germany) Mike joined the antifungal project team at Pfizer Central Research in 1978. As co-leader of the project, he was responsible for the biological evaluation of new antifungal drugs that led to the discovery of fluconazole, the world's most successful antifungal drug. Mike was also responsible for initiating new drug discovery projects at Pfizer in the areas of antivirals, diarrhoeal diseases and asthma. In 1989 he was recruited to Glaxo as Head of Chemotherapy, where he was responsible of projects in the antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral and antiparasitic fields. His department was integral in the in vivo evaluation of Relenza. Following the merger to form Glaxo Wellcome, Mike was made Therapeutic Director for Microbial Diseases. Based in Verona, Italy, he was responsible for antimicrobial drug discovery and research strategy in the UK, Italy, Spain, the USA and Singapore. With the subsequent merger to form Glaxo SmithKline in 2001, Mike chose to follow an independent path, offering consultancy services to VC's and biotech. companies interested in anti-infective research. Clients have included Apax partners, 3i, Polyphor, Evolva, Theravance, Proteus and Prolysis, where Mike chairs the company's SAB. He serves on the Wellcome Trust's board for the evaluation of grant applications.
Stephen Oliver
Stephen Oliver is Professor of Systems Biology & Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Cambridge Centre for Systems Biology. His research involves both experimental and bioinformatics approaches to understanding the workings of the eukaryotic cell, mainly using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as his experimental system. Stephen Oliver led the European team that sequenced the first chromosome, from any organism, yeast chromosome III. He continued to play a major role in the Yeast Genome Sequencing Project, and went on to become Scientific Coordinator of EUROFAN, which pioneered a wide range of approaches to the systematic analysis of gene function, using S. cerevisiae. His current work employs a range of high-throughput analytical techniques - transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and rapid phenotyping. He is exploiting genome-wide metabolic models to identify functional modules within the yeast metabolic network and predict epistatic interactions between genes (http://www.bioc.cam.ac.uk/uto/oliver.html). He collaborated with Ross King to develop the Robot Scientist system for automated functional genomic hypothesis generation and experimentation, and re-engineered the genome configuration of yeast to provide a direct test of the chromosomal theory of evolution. Stephen Oliver is Editor-in-Chief of Yeast and a member of the Strategic Advisory Board of BBSRC. He is a member of EMBO, a Fellow of both the American Academy of Microbiology, and the Academy of Medical Sciences, and was recently made an Honorary Member of the British Mycological Society. Prof. Oliver was the Kathleen Barton-Wright Memorial Lecturer of the Institute of Biology & Society for General Microbiology in 1996, and won the AstraZeneca Award of the Biochemical Society in 2001.
David Pompliano
David L. Pompliano is the Principal at Sanderling Consulting LLC, where he assists investors, companies and philanthropies in the evaluation of pharmaceutical assets and in the process of drug discovery and development. After graduating with honors in chemistry from the University of Virginia, he earned the PhD in bioorganic chemistry at Stanford University with John Frost. He completed his training at Harvard University as an NIH postdoctoral fellow in enzymology and molecular biology with Jeremy Knowles. His career in the pharmaceutical industry began in 1990 at Merck Research Laboratories, where he first worked on signaling pathways relevant to cancer before taking on the leadership of target-based approaches to antibacterial drug discovery. In 1999, he joined DuPont Pharma as Executive Director of antimicrobial research. Then in 2002, he was appointed Vice President of biology for the Microbial Musculoskeletal and Proliferative Diseases Center for Excellence in Drug Discover at GlaxoSmithKline. Pompliano led a group of >200 biological scientists who, in collaboration with medicinal chemists, generated more than 25 medicine development candidates for infectious diseases (including diseases of the developing world), cancer and musculoskeletal diseases. Pompliano joined Merck Research Labs in 2007 as Worldwide Basic Head in the Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Franchise, where he was responsible for the antimicrobial discovery and early development strategy. He formed Sanderling Consulting LLC in 2009. He has published over 50 research papers on topics in antimicrobials and cancer, and has given more than 30 invited lectures internationally. He holds three patents for novel methods in drug discovery.
