Our Scientific Advisory Board

Donald is an independent scientific consultant providing expert advice on cancer drug discovery to academic, industrial, and venture capital organisations. 

Donald obtained an MA in Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, UK, in 1980, before working at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, for eight years on the role of proteases in cancer, then on inherited connective tissue disorders.  The latter was the basis of his DPhil degree. In 1988, Donald joined ICI which subsequently became Zeneca then AstraZeneca. For most of his twenty-year career in the pharmaceutical industry, he worked on cancer drug discovery and early clinical development projects. He was directly responsible for the delivery of ten novel cancer development compounds, several of which have progressed to phase II & III clinical trials and two, so far, to regulatory approval.  Between 2009 and 2017, Donald set up and led the academic Drug Discovery Unit at the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute (University of Manchester, UK). Under his leadership, the team built a drug discovery infrastructure and a leading cancer project portfolio.  During this period, three projects, including one with a development compound, were successfully licensed to downstream partners. Donald is a co-author on more than ninety peer-reviewed academic publications.