Scientific Advisory Board
Professor Margaret Frame OBE, PhD
Science Director Cancer Research UK Edinburgh Centre and and Chair of Cancer Biology, University of Edinburgh.
Professor Frame has spent years working on a specialised molecular network that’s responsible for controlling how cells stick to one another, move and spread. She’s found that a key molecule in this so-called ‘adhesion network’, called FAK, can affect the environment around tumours and help the cancer cells escape attack by the immune system.
More...
Professor Neil Carragher PhD
Personal Chair of Drug Discovery, Cancer Research UK Edinburgh Centre
Professor Carragher has been the principal Investigator of Drug Discovery at the University of Edinburgh since 2010 after spending time in industry as Principal Scientist with the Advanced Science and Technology Laboratory at AstraZeneca. The Edinburgh Drug Discovery group embraces advanced technology platforms and disease models to drive innovations in oncology drug discovery and development.
More...
Alan Serrels PhD
Research Fellow, Cancer Research UK Edinburgh Centre
Dr Serrels work focuses on how cancer cells contribute to regulating the composition of the tumour immune environment to promote evasion of the anti-tumour immune response. His team recently identified a new role for the adhesion linked kinase Focal Adhesion Kinase (FAK) in regulating chemokine and cytokine expression in cancer cells. Their aim is to identify optimal combinations with current / emerging immunotherapies for translation to the clinic.
More...
Professor Paul Timpson PhD
Laboratory Head - Invasion and Metastasis Lab
Paul completed his PhD at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, UK in 2002 before moving to the Garvan Institute in 2003 to investigate growth factor receptor trafficking in breast cancer and head and neck cancers. Today, Paul’s laboratory has an ongoing interest in the development of novel multi-disciplinary live imaging techniques to investigate molecular dynamics of cancer cells in vivo and using these techniques to understand cancer in the context of the surrounding environment. Pinpointing the molecular drivers of cancer progression and the environmental cues that cause resistance to current therapies are the focus of his group’s research.
More…
Mark Devlin B. Sc. (Hons) PhD GradD Drug Dev
Chief Executive Officer - Aculeus Therapeutics (former Chief Scientific Officer - Amplia Therapeutics)
After obtaining a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Melbourne, Mark has worked in a variety of roles focused on drug discovery and development in a number of therapeutic areas including, pain, inflammation, autoimmune disease and oncology. Mark worked at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre between 2008 and 2018 in a number of roles for the CRC for Cancer Therapeutics (CRC), first as Head of the CRC’s Translational Cancer Biology Laboratory and later as Director of Translational Cancer Biology for the CRC. In his role as a lead scientist, Mark and his team were involved in the PRMT5 program that was licensed by the CRC to MSD, in 2016 and the Chromatin-Modifying Enzyme programs licensed to Pfizer Inc in 2018.
Mark was also the Biology Leader on the CRC Programs that delivered AMP945 and AMP886 that are now being developed by Amplia.
In addition to his scientific experience, Mark has held a number of business-facing roles as COO of the CRC where he led due-diligence activities between the CRC and Pfizer and later as CEO and Managing Director of the commercial partner in the CRC, CTxONE Pty Ltd. Mark was also Chief Scientific Officer of Amplia Therapeutics Limited before joining Aculeus Therapeutics as CEO. Mark is an honorary Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Melbourne, and has a Graduate Diploma in Drug Development from the University of New South Wales and an MBA from the Melbourne Business School.
