Asterion Management Team

The biographies of the new Asterion Management team are provided below:

BOARD

Non Executive Chairman: Dr Michael Moore   PhD, DSc, FRCPath

Dr Moore holds PhD and DSc degrees from the University of Nottingham and initially pursued an academic career, based largely at the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research and Manchester University, where he was Reader in Experimental Oncology and Immunology.  He entered the UK Biotechnology industry in 1989, becoming a director of Xenova Group in 1994 where he was a member of the Executive Team which took the Company public on NASDAQ and LSE.  As the Company’s Chief Scientific Officer he played a major role in the acquisition and integration of biologics company, Cantab Pharmaceuticals, in 2000.

In 2002, Dr Moore became Chief Executive Officer Designate of Piramed Limited, a private UK-based biotechnology company dedicated to the discovery and development of small molecule inhibitors of PI 3-kinase, for cancer and immune-inflammatory disease.  Capitalised in 2003 the Company entered into an early cancer collaboration with Genentech in 2005 with a headline valuation of $230 million, the lead product of which is in clinical trials.  Piramed was acquired by Roche in May 2008 in one of the most successful recent trade sales in the UK life sciences sector.

Dr Moore is currently Chairman of Trillium Therapeutics Inc, a private Toronto-based biologics company, and of Myotec Limited, a speciality pharma company spun out of Imperial Innovations and Charité Medical School, Berlin; he is also Professor Associate in the Department of Cancer Genetics and Pharmacogenomics in the Brunel Institute.

Chief Scientific Officer and Director: Professor Richard Ross MD FRCP

Professor Ross is a Clinical Endocrinologist at Sheffield University and previously a Senior Lecturer at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. He is Head of The Academic Unit for Endocrinology and Diabetes and Director of Sheffield Medical Innovation Centre. He has been a member of the editorial boards of 4 international endocrine journals, and served as an elected member of council for the Society for Endocrinology. He has extensive experience in both investigator led and pharmaceutically driven clinical trials and underwent a successful FDA audit as part of the original Pharmacia licence for growth hormone replacement in adults. He has acted as a consultant for most of the big pharmaceutical companies marketing growth hormone including: Pharmacia, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, Serono, Ferring and Ipsen and is currently a member of a Lilly International Advisory Board. His primary research interest is pituitary disease with a particular focus on hormone replacement. Professor Ross has published over a hundred peer-reviewed articles including recent publications in Nature Genetics, The Lancet, and PNAS.

Non-executive Director: Dr David Milroy BSc, PhD, MBA

Dr David Milroy joined Aberdeen Asset Management in 2007, and is responsible for the White Rose Seed Fund and Aberdeen's portfolio of technology companies. David serves on the Board of Essential Viewing Systems and Asterion and is an observer on the Board of several other portfolio companies.

Prior to joining AAM he was responsible for identifying investment opportunities at the unique innovation fund, ITI. Before moving into the investment community David was a principal consultant at leading international energy and LS consultancy firm, Wood Mackenzie, where he supported Investment banking teams and advised clients on their corporate and licensing strategies as well as performing due diligence projects on companies, products and technologies.

David started his career as a scientist with GlaxoSmithKline. He holds PhD, MBA and BSc (Hons) degrees from Bath, Edinburgh and Aberdeen Universities, respectively.

MANAGEMENT

Founding Scientist and Head of Molecular Design: Professor Peter Artymiuk MA, D.Phil

Professor Artymiuk is a protein crystallographer and bioinformaticist in the Krebs Institute Structural Studies Group, Department of Molecular Biology & Biotechnology (MBB), Sheffield University. His laboratory works on both experimental and theoretical aspects of protein structure analysis:  (1) X-ray crystallography is used experimentally to determine protein structures and to study the relationship between structure and function in collaboration with microbiologists and biochemists; (2) Bioinformatics: in collaboration with colleagues in Department of Information Studies he has developed highly successful tools for analysis of 3-D macromolecular structures. Professor Artymiuk has held fellowships in Harvard and Oxford Universities. He has published >100 papers (including nine in Nature, Science or Cell) which have attracted more than 3600 citations.

Founding Scientist and Head of Biotechnology: Professor Jon Sayers BSc, PhD

Professor Sayers is a biochemist in Sheffield University Medical School. Appointed in 1995, he is head of the Academic Unit of Infection and Immunity. Previous contacts with industry have generated awards from the DTI (SMART Phase I and II with NBL Gene Sciences Ltd in the 1990s to develop the Quickstrand single stranded DNA preparation kit), and the widely used Amersham Sculptor Mutagenesis System. He has held a DTI-BBSRC LINK programme grant with Zeneca Pharmaceuticals and has extensive research experience ranging from chemical synthesis of anti-herpes drugs through protein characterisation and enzymology to molecular biology and bioinformatics.  Professor Sayers spent 5 years at the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine, Goettingen, Germany under Professor Fritz Eckstein where he studied protein-DNA recognition and co-developed the Amersham Sculptor kit for site-directed mutagenesis. Professor Sayers has several patent applications and is currently a director of the Biochemical Society, representing 8000 scientists worldwide. He has published in journals such as Nature, Nature Structural Biology, Science, J. Am. Med. Assoc., FASEB J, EMBO J, PNAS and JBC.