A human focus for 21st century life sciences

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.