Meet Our Directors
Nick Higgins - Board Chair & Non-executive Director
Nick has been associated with Avvinity Therapeutics since its foundation and is now Chair of the company’s Board of Directors. Nick is an experienced life sciences executive with significant business and corporate development achievements and has over 35 years in the life sciences industry with extensive knowledge of UK and US markets in both private and public sectors.
Nick is a Director of Lizard BioConsulting, an independent consultancy specialising in business development for life science companies, which he founded in March 2013. He is also Deputy Chair of the Cell & Gene Therapy Catapult.
Chris Lowe, MBA, PhD - Non-executive Director
Chris joined Horizon Discovery in 2011 and, prior to leading research operations within Horizon, led the scientific teams responsible for the development and provision of a range of translational research services to support pre-clinical drug discovery programs.
Chris has an MBA from the Judge Business School, Cambridge University and a PhD in the field of Medical Genetics from the University of Cambridge where he engaged in research into the genetic causes of Type 1 diabetes in the laboratory of Professor John Todd, followed by postdoctoral work focusing on Type 2 diabetes and metabolic disease in the laboratory of Professor Stephen O’Rahilly.
Jon Moore, PhD - Non-executive Director
Jon is a co-founder of Avvinity Therapeutics. He brings over 15 years of experience from some of the leading biotech companies in the UK. He has a track record of success in early-stage drug discovery against first in class targets, the application of gene editing to drug discovery, developing new therapeutic technology platforms and in business development.
He is an Operating Partner at Advent Life Sciences and previously he was CSO of Horizon Discovery where he co-founded Avvinity Therapeutics. Prior to that, he was Head of Biology at Vernalis Research.
Jon is originally a biochemist and cell biologist with a PhD from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and extensive postdoctoral experience in academia including 4 years with Nobel Laureate, Tim Hunt.
Jonathan Synett, MBA - Non-executive Director
Jonathan is the Chief Investment Officer of NCL Technology Ventures, a specialist investment management firm focussing on high growth technology companies in the healthcare space.
Jonathan has over 20 years experience working with and investing in early stage, high growth businesses. As well as being the founder of a high growth health and wellness business, he has managed investment portfolios for two Ultra High Net Worth’s, investing across a variety of sectors, including technology, renewables and healthcare.
He holds a degree in Economics and History from Manchester University and an INSEAD MBA. Jonathan now manages both of NCL’s technology funds and sits on the Board of a number of venture stage businesses.
Nick Staples, PhD - Executive Director
Nick has more than 20 years’ industry experience in the Life Sciences, Healthcare and capital markets worldwide. He has led a range of international transactions and strategic projects including M&A, fundraising (more than £150 million to date), licensing, divestments and new business ventures.
Prior to his current role, Nick was the CEO of Locate Bio, and previously the Chief Business Officer at Artios Pharma and also Chief Business Officer at TopiVert Pharma.
He also held include senior corporate and business development roles at Vectura plc, SSL International plc and Protherics plc, was a life sciences equity analyst at WestLB Panmure and a management consultant in life sciences at PA Consulting.es Here
Pauline Stasiak, PhD - Non-executive Director
Pauline is an Investment Principal in LifeArc’s Seed Fund. LifeArc is an independent charity advancing medical research towards patient treatments and diagnostics addressing diseases where there is high unmet medical need.
Following a PhD at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and post-doctoral research at Stanford University she has had a career in technology transfer with the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and LifeArc gaining over 26 years’ experience in identifying and facilitating the translation of early stage research into patient benefit.
She sits on the Board of the AMR Centre, GyreOx as well as Avvinity Therapeutics as a Non-Executive Director.
Mike Westby, PhD - Non-executive Director
Mike is a co-founder of Avvinity Therapeutics and continues to be a company director and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board.
As well as being CEO of Centauri Therapeutics, an immunotherapy company focused on infectious disease, Mike previously founded Agalimmune, an immuno-oncology Biotech that was successfully exited in 2017 to a NASDAQ listed company; its lead asset is currently in Phase 1 clinical trials. Mike has more than 15 years’ experience in Pharma R&D, having worked for both Roche and Pfizer across the Research and Development spectrum.
Whilst at Pfizer he helped successfully develop a novel therapy for treatment of HIV infection. Mike also headed up Pfizer’s Opportunities for Partnership in Medicine (OPM) Research Unit and was a member of the Research Leadership Team at Pfizer’s R&D UK Laboratories.
Mike trained in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at University of Durham, obtained his PhD at Warwick University and then completed a postdoctoral research fellow at St George’s Hospital Medical School.