A human focus for 21st century life sciences

Professor Sir Munir Pirmohamed (MB ChB, PhD, FRCPE, FRCP, FFPM. FRSB, FBPhS, FMedSci, DL) is David Weatherall Chair in Medicine at the University of Liverpool, NHS Chair of Pharmacogenetics, and a Consultant Physician at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital. He is Director of the Centre for Drug Safety Sciences, and Director of the Wolfson Centre for Personalised Medicine. He is also Director of HDR North. He also leads the Centre for Excellence in Regulatory Science in Pharmacogenomics (CERSI-PGx). He is an inaugural National Institute for Health and Care Research Senior Investigator, Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in the UK, and Chair of the Commission Human Medicines. He is a medical trustee for the British Heart Foundation. He is Past-President of British Pharmacological Society and of the Association of Physicians. He was awarded a Knights Bachelor in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2015. His research focuses on personalised medicine, clinical pharmacology and drug safety in a variety of disease areas, including cardiovascular medicine.

Christine Mummery is Professor of Developmental Biology at Leiden University Medical Center. Following a PhD in Biophysics, she moved to the Hubrecht Institute to study ion channels and later, cardiovascular diseases using pluripotent stem cells from patients, developing organ-on-chip models. This has centred on safety pharmacology to predict toxic effects of drugs on the human heart and capturing cardiac and vascular disease phenotypes including identifying individual vulnerability and drug sensitivity.  She was president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (2020-2021) and co-founded the European Organ-on-Chip Society. She is also a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Science. In 2021, she was awarded the Lefoulon Delalande Prize jointly with Gordon Keller. She is currently on, or chairs, advisory boards of Sartorius AG (Germany), HeartBeatBio (Austria), Mogrify UK, Cellestic, Founding (now Associate) Editor of the ISSCR journal Stem Cell Reports, among others.

Shareen Doak is a Deputy Director in Safety and Surveillance at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), leading the Benefit-Risk Evaluation I function. She is an Emeritus Professor of Genotoxicology and Cancer, and UK and EUROTOX Registered Toxicologist (UKRT, ERT).

Prior to joining the MHRA, Shareen’s academic research experience focused on the genotoxic profiles of chemicals and advanced materials, mechanisms underlying their DNA damaging potential and subsequent consequences upon human health. Her interests extended to carcinogenicity, and development of advanced 3D culture models and mechanism-based bioassays for safety assessment to reduce the need for animal testing.

Shareen has served as a member of the Committee on Carcinogenicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (COC), the Scientific Advisory Group on Chemical Safety in Consumer Products (SAG-CS) for the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS), and the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) Science Quality Assurance Group (SQAG).

Nicole C. Kleinstreuer, PhD, is the Acting NIH Deputy Director for Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives. In this role, she leads the Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives (DPCPSI) within the NIH Office of the Director, which oversees trans-NIH programmatic research and strategic policy initiatives, including the NIH Common Fund and offices focused on women’s health, data science, AIDS research, disease prevention, behavioural and social sciences, dietary supplements, and tribal health, among others. Dr Kleinstreuer is internationally recognised for her leadership in developing innovative, human-relevant research strategies that advance public health protection. Prior to her current position, she served as Director of the National Toxicology Program Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods (NICEATM), within the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Dr Kleinstreuer holds BS degrees in biomedical engineering and applied mathematics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a PhD in bioengineering from the University of Canterbury.

Merel Ritskes-Hoitinga is Professor in Evidence-Based Transition to Animal-Free Innovations at Utrecht University. After her graduation as a veterinarian from Utrecht University in 1986, she has been committed to the goal of implementing the 3Rs, Replacement, Reducation and Refinement of animal studies. Systematic reviews turned out to be a valuable methodology to implement the 3Rs. Unfortunately, the evidence from systematic reviews demonstrates the generally low quality of publications and low translational value of animal studies for humans. This scientific fact indicates clearly that we need to find more human-relevant research. Not only is it important to develop new non-animal alternatives, ie more human-relevant methodologies, but also on how these will become generally accepted and taken up in legislation. This has implied taking steps to broadening her research and education, also teaming up with social sciences and multiple stakeholder groups.

Dr Katya Hélin (formerly Tsaioun) is a life sciences entrepreneur and a founder of Akttyva Therapeutics. The focus of her career has been the translation of scientific innovations into therapies and technologies enabling improvements in human health. She spent two decades in pharmaceutical industry leading translational drug-discovery teams, subsequently founding Apredica, which became a leader in commercializing in vitro de-risking technologies for drug-discovery programs. After a successful acquisition of Apredica by Cyprotex, PLC (now Evotec), she served as a CSO and Board member in the merged company. Over the past decade Dr Hélin conducted academic research in toxicology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she led international multi-stakeholder efforts to establish evidence-based methodologies and practices in translational research. She also serves on advisory boards of companies, non-profits, and on scientific review committees at the NASEM, NIH, EFSA and private foundations. She earned her PhD in Human Nutrition Science from Tufts University and completed post-doctoral training in neurochemistry at Harvard Medical School.

John has more than 250 published papers (primarily around human B cells and their malignancies) and has been among the top 0.5% of published scientists as acknowledged by his inclusion in the elite club of ISI's 'Most Highly Cited Researchers'.

As of 2013, John retired from the University of Birmingham while keeping (Emeritus) Professor status. This has freed him to develop and progress the expanding and increasingly exciting opportunities within the highly successful Birmingham and Oxford based CRO, Celentyx Ltd.

It was back in 2004 that John combined his own Immunology expertise with that of Neuropharmacologist Nick Barnes to create Celentyx Ltd, a high-end service CRO offering bespoke Human Immuno-Profiling for Pharma & Biotech. Celentyx’s unrivalled access to a range of fresh patient material helps accelerate the translation of test compounds from bench to bedside.

Geoff Pilkington is an Emeritus Professor of Neuro-oncology, having held chairs at King's College, London and the University of Portsmouth, where he was Director of the Brain Tumour Research Centre which exclusively used human cells, tissues and biomaterials in their research. He is a Past President of the British Neuro-oncology Society and Honorary Treasurer, Executive Board Member and Scientific Board Member of the European Association of Neuro-oncology as well as being a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. His published work was largely focussed around brain tumour invasion, the blood brain barrier, the tumour microenvironment, brain tumour modelling and repurposed drugs.

Rebecca Ram is an independent scientific consultant to the Safer Medicines Trust, working in the field of human-relevant science for almost two decades. Prior to this, she worked for a decade as a clinical data manager and programmer within phase 1-IV clinical trials for pharmaceutical and clinical research organisations(CROs). Rebecca has a Masters (MSc) in Toxicology (with Bioinformatics) and a BSc in Applied Biology. Her particular interest is in the field of clinical and scientific research and policy, including development and regulatory acceptance of advanced in-vitro and computational methods, improved use of clinical data and  'big data' analysis, as well as transition to human relevant approaches in fundamental research and disease modelling.  Rebecca has written or co-authored occasional research papers and has presented at webinars, universities and colleges. She has also served on review committees for conference abstracts, publications and early career research awards.

Kathy Archibald is the chair of Safer Medicines Trust. She graduated in genetics from Nottingham University and went on to work for Searle Pharmaceuticals and Genetics International (which became MediSense before acquisition by Abbott Laboratories). She then spent a decade working in conservation, including as a teacher-naturalist for the RSPB, followed by educational fundraising in schools for Action for Children. She founded Safer Medicines Trust in 2005, to confront the poor relevance of much pharmaceutical research (based on animals) to human medicine and its serious consequences for patient safety. The Trust has held conferences at the Royal Society and the House of Lords, initiated the Safety of Medicines Bill and published many peer-reviewed papers, book chapters and a popular science book, Rat Trap. Safer Medicines Trust was a founder member of the Alliance for Human Relevant Science, which helped establish the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Relevant Science in 2020.