About us - Management

Dr Chris Martin

Prior to co-founding Spirogen Chris had worked in the healthcare sector for ten years as a consultant with Paras Ltd. Chris has founded companies in Europe and the USA and is currently a board member of Sciona inc, Finsbury Technology Trust and Xenva Ltd. Chris is a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and a Sainsbury Management Fellow (MBA, IMD 1989).

Prof David Thurston

David Thurston is Professor of Anticancer Drug Discovery at the School of Pharmacy, University of London, where he is also Director of the CR-UK Protein-Protein Interactions Drug Discovery Research Group. He is a pharmacist by training, and has spent most of his career in academic research involved with the discovery, medicinal chemistry and development of anticancer agents. He began the programme of research in 1987 that led to the founding of Spirogen in 2001.

Professor Thurston has more than 110 publications in key chemistry, biochemical and medicinal chemistry journals, and has been a member of several national scientific committees including the Cancer Research UK New Agents Committee which oversees the acceptance of novel antitumor agents for development and clinical trial. In the regulatory area he has recently completed a period of membership of the Committee on Safety of Medicines (CSM), and also chaired its Chemistry, Pharmacy & Standards (CPS) Sub-Committee. To-date he has supervised over 50 postdoctoral research fellows and PhD students.

Dr Philip Howards

Following an undergraduate degree in chemistry, Dr Howard carried out a PhD in synthetic chemistry at the University of East Anglia (UK) through a CASE studentship funded through ICI (now Zeneca). After his PhD studies, Dr Howard undertook postdoctoral studies at SmithKlineBeechams Ltd (now GlaxoSmithKline) before joining Professor Thurston's team in the early 1990s. This background provides him with the necessary experience to drive Spirogen's chemistry programme in his role as Director of Chemistry Research. He currently acts as Deputy Director of the Cancer Research UK Gene Targeting Drug Design Research Group. His background in the pharmaceutical industry has proved useful in the establishment of Spirogen.

Prof John Hartley

Professor Hartley has a B.Sc. in Biochemistry and a Ph.D. in Medicine (Oncology) from the University of Manchester (UK) resulting from research in the Department of Experimental Chemotherapy at the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research at the Christie Hospital (UK). He was then a visiting fellow at the National Cancer Institute, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland, USA in the Laboratory of Molecular Pharmacology with Dr. Kurt Kohn, and an Alberta Heritage Research Fellow at the Department of Chemistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada with Prof. Bill Lown. He joined the newly formed department of Oncology at the University College and Middlesex School of Medicine in 1988 and has been Professor of Cancer Studies at UCL since 1996. He has also been Director of the Cancer Research UK Drug-DNA Interactions Research Group since 1995. He has over 150 publications in scientific journals, and serves on a number of committees including the Cancer Research UK Phase I/II Committee and Drug Development Advisory Committee and the Leukaemia Research Fund Clinical Trials Advisory Panel. He is currently Chair of the Central Institutional Review Board (CIRB) which is the early clinical trial protocol review and ethics committee of Cancer Research UK. Professor Hartley is a Chartered Biologist and Fellow of the Institute of Biology.

Ms Tuula Moilanen

Tuula trained as an economist at Helsinki University and a corporate finance specialist at the Swedish School of Business in Helsinki. Following a number of senior roles in the Treasury of Valmet Corporation and an MBA at IMI in Geneva, Tuula was appointed Group Finance Director of Valmet Automation, a leading process automation company with operations in 15 countries. Tuula was appointed Regional Finance Manager of ICI Europe Nordic Region in 1991. She subsequently joined Paras Ltd as CFO where she led the formation of the company and its subsidiaries in Africa, Australia and the Netherlands. She also authored a book and a number of papers in investment analysis in high-technology areas. Tuula was a founder of Xenva Ltd. In her role as CFO and Company Secretary, she has managed a number of funding rounds in the Xenva portfolio companies raising in excess of £18.7m. Tuula's experience includes financial and transaction management in Europe, the USA, Australasian and Africa.