Management
Diurnal has a strong, multi-skilled and entrepreneurial management team in place:
Kevin Bryett – Acting Non-Executive Chairman
Kevin Bryett originally qualified as a physician at St George’s Medical School London, and worked in both hospital and general practice before entering the pharmaceutical industry in 1982. Subsequently, he has held a number of senior management positions in the global vaccines industry, including Managing Director of companies in the UK and Germany, and Vice President of European Commercial Operations for Aventis (now Sanofi) Pasteur MSD. More recently he held the position of Vice President of Global Commercial Operations for the world’s fifth largest vaccines business, Chiron Vaccines. In this role he was a core member of the team that managed the $1 billion acquisition of the world’s sixth largest vaccines company, PowderJect Pharmaceuticals. As a senior industry executive, Dr Bryett has sat on several strategic and operational Boards both globally and in a number of European countries. He now divides his time between running his own management consultancy and acting as a non-executive director in the biotechnology sector.
Martin Whitaker, PhD - General Manager
Martin Whitaker is Business Manager for the Sheffield Medical Innovation Centre at the University of Sheffield - a joint appointment between BioFusion PLC and the University. In his role Martin identifies, develops and manages commercial projects emanating from the Faculty of Medicine at Sheffield. Prior to this Martin was Operations Director of Critical Pharmaceuticals Limited, a venture capital backed drug delivery company spun out of the University of Nottingham. Martin had overall responsibility for product development, building and developing the scientific team as well being part of the fund raising team that secured £3M in funding over a four year period. Martin has a degree in Biochemistry, University of Bristol, with a PhD in Pharmaceutical Science from the University of Nottingham. Martin also spent a year working for Pfizer in the Pharmaceutical R&D Department at Pfizer Global R&D (UK).
Richard Ross, MD - Chief Scientific Officer
A founding director of the company, Richard is a clinical Endocrinologist in the Department of Clinical Sciences, University of Sheffield and was previously a Senior Lecturer at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London. He is Head of the Section of Endocrinology and Reproduction and serves on the School Council. Professor Ross’s research and clinical interests are in Pituitary Disease. He has been a member of the editorial boards of four 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. His primary research interest is pituitary disease with a particular focus on hormone replacement. Richard has published over a 100 peer-reviewed articles including recent publications in Nature Medicine, Nature Genetics, The Lancet, and PNAS.
Hiep Huatan, PhD - Development Director
Hiep Huatan is a pharmaceutical development Consultant and Managing Director of H2 Pharma Consulting Limited. Prior to this he held the position of VP, Research and Development at Phoqus Pharmaceuticals, an AIM listed Biotechnology company, where he had the overall responsibility for directing the full-development programme for ChronocortTM, a novel oral modified release presentation of hydrocortisone for the treatment of adrenal insufficiency. Before joining Phoqus Pharmaceuticals, Hiep held a number of senior positions at Pfizer Global R&D (UK), where he was pivotally involved with the development and successful registration of RevatioTM in Europe and US, TykosynTM in Japan and RevolutionTM in Europe. Hiep has over fifteen years of pharmaceutical and biotechnology product development experience. Hiep graduated in Pharmacy from the University of Nottingham and gained his PhD in Pharmaceutics from the University of Manchester. Hiep is a qualified pharmacist and a registered member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain.
Peter Grant, PhD - Non Executive Director
Peter Grant is a founder director of BioFusion PLC, an AIM listed company, Peter is also a non-executive director of Adjuvantix Limited and Asterion Limited all companies acting in the field of human healthcare. Following his PhD, Peter joined Genzyme UK as a Senior Research Scientist working within the clinical diagnostics division. He moved to Celltech from Genzyme, and was then recruited by Sir Christopher Evans to join the start-up team at Enzymatix Limited where he became the Head of R&D, spanning five business areas. Two of these were later spun out to form Chiros (later Chiroscience) and Celsis with Peter as a co-founder and R&D Director. Following venture capital funding rounds Celsis was successfully floated on the London Stock Exchange in June 1993. Peter completed his tenure at Celsis as Director of Business Development and Technology leaving in 2002 to set up BioFusion PLC