I am a molecular and cellular biologist by training and have been working for more than 20 years in drug discovery and development, first as a research scientist in a pharma company and later on in more commercial roles within the life sciences industry.
But I am also a parent that one day heard the most terrifying words that any parent may hear. My first daughter Laura was diagnosed with cancer in 2005 and tragically, lost her life to the disease in 2006. Since then I became determined to make the best possible use of my skills and expertise to change the outlook for children with cancer.
The paediatric oncology community has done a fabulous job at improving cure rates for children with cancer. But for many forms of childhood cancers we have not seen any substantial improvements over the past decades. There is a clear consensus that we can only cure more children if we make specific and more innovative drugs available to these young patients. This is even more challenging for brain cancers, with the well-known delivery problems and the likelihood of serious side effects.
This prompted me to set up aPODD (accelerating Paediatric Oncology Drug Development), a London-based childhood cancer charity. We have adopted a venture philanthropy model, working with both academia and biotech companies with innovative technologies. We are currently focused on drug repurposing and we have two ongoing projects, for medulloblastoma and neuroblastoma, where we seek to identify new clinical candidates using artificial intelligence solutions.
While I continue my work with aPODD as volunteer and chairman of the trust, I have decided to start a new initiative in the for-profit sector too. I am the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Oncoheroes Biosciences, a Boston-based biotech company exclusively focused on childhood cancer drug development. Alongside our drug discovery lab, where we are currently looking to identify new drug combinations for medulloblastoma, we are also seeking to in-license promising clinic-ready assets for further paediatric development. Our first asset is volasertib, a PLK1 inhibitor licensed from Boehringer Ingelheim.
These are ambitious projects. But I believe we all need to think big to solve the huge problem of delivering safer and more effective treatments for children. It is also clear that we can achieve our objectives only by working together with key stakeholders and scientific experts. That’s exactly why I am very keen to work with CBTDDC, in our common quest to deliver better treatments for children with brain cancers.