Clare Searle joined Vernalis as Finance Director in January 2019. She is an accomplished Finance Director and business advisor, with experience in finance, strategy, and operational planning across a broad range of industries. Clare qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 2004 and worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers for 16 years, primarily in the Advisory Practice and with a focus on restructuring and turnaround, as well as a number of secondments to multinational corporations and banking institutions. Clare also holds a BSc in Biology and MSc in Allergy and Immunology.

Dr James Murray has been with Vernalis since 2001 having previously held research roles in the USA and Australia.

Throughout this period, James has guided the evolution of our approach to drug discovery, with a particular emphasis on the role of biophysics across a wide range of target classes. He co-led the discovery of multiple candidates in collaboration with pharma and biotech companies, most notably BH3 mimetics targeting Mcl-1 and Bcl-2. He has over 60 peer reviewed scientific papers and, 13 granted patents and more than 20 active patent applications. James champions an open and inclusive approach to the Vernalis research culture, which is reflected in how we collaborate.

Dr Lisa Baker joined Vernalis in 2001, having previously completed a degree and PhD in Biophysics and a postdoctoral position as a protein crystallographer in the York Structural Biology Laboratory. One of her main interests is in the use of high-throughput crystallographic techniques to solve large volumes of ligand-bound protein crystal structures which can subsequently be used to rapidly progress a fragment-based lead discovery project. Throughout her career, she has solved 1000s of ligand-bound structures which have contributed to the design of candidate compounds for many different therapeutic targets. She is also an experienced project leader leading several collaborative projects in which the project teams delivered nanomolar affinity compounds that have subsequently progressed to lead optimisation and pre-clinical studies.

James Davidson joined the company in 1997; shortly after gaining his PhD from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge.

During his time at Vernalis, he has worked on numerous protein target classes and therapeutic indications and is a co-inventor on over 20 patents. Most recently he led the chemistry efforts on projects targeting Bcl-2 family proteins for cancer.

James is currently the Director of Chemistry; with responsibility for synthetic and medicinal chemistry, as well as computational chemistry and cheminformatics.

Dr Ben Davis is an NMR spectroscopist and biophysicist by training, although since 2022 he has focussed on Business Development. However, he still maintains an active interest in developing new methods to enable Fragment Based Drug Discovery, particularly against challenging targets. Ben studied for his PhD in protein folding with Professor Alan Fersht at Cambridge University, and then studied molecular interactions at UCL before joining RiboTargets, now Vernalis, in 1998. He has contributed to seven books on FBDD since 2012, and has been an author on more than thirty scientific publications. He is a frequent speaker at scientific conferences.

Kerry brings nearly 30 years of drug discovery experience across government, pharmaceutical (MSD and GlaxoSmithKline) and contract research industries (Transpharmation Ltd, Sygnature Discovery Ltd), including 8 years in business development. During this time, Kerry has successfully driven sales growth globally across standalone services and fully integrated drug discovery programmes amounting to £millions per year and fostered key strategic partnerships with biotechs and VCs. Kerry completed her Master’s in Business Administration with the Open University in 2021.