A human focus for 21st century life sciences

John is a tumour immunologist at the University of Hull who has morphed into someone who spends most of his time developing lab-on-a-chip technology for personalized medicine against solid tumours. His interdisciplinary biomicrofluidics group, comprising clinicians, chemists and engineers, has been pioneering the development and adoption of bespoke microfluidic devices for almost 20 years. The group is equipped to design and fabricate devices from a range of materials depending on the desired end-use, recently moving more to using 3D-printed devices in biocompatible polymers. The group has extensive experience of maintaining different tumour types, in a viable state, including glioblastoma, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, thyroid, renal and colorectal tissues. In addition, the group has undertaken extensive downstream analysis of effluents and tissue at the molecular (miRNA, mRNA, and circulating tumour DNA) and protein levels, allowing detailed analysis of clinically-relevant treatments of tissue on devices.

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).

Clive graduated with a PhD in in vitro dermal absorption followed by a post-doctoral position at Newcastle University. In 1996, he joined CRL performing in vitro skin penetration studies, then promoted to Director, In Vitro Toxicology, leading the in vitro toxicology, genetox, safety pharmacology and advanced in vitro model’s teams. In 2021, Clive started a consulting business aiding clients in gaining adoption and regulatory acceptance of NAMs. Clive is the board chairperson for PeptiMatrix, a board member of the 3Rs Collaborative and NC3Rs, Vice President of ESTIV and Vice President Elect for the Dermal Toxicology Specialty Section of Society of Toxicology (SOT). He is member of the Roundtable of Toxicology Consultants, International MPS Society and SOT, a European Registered Toxicologist, and is a chartered biologist and chartered scientist and Fellow of Royal Society of Biology.

Regulatory Science Leader: Food Allergy and Immunology in Unilever’s Safety and Environmental Regulatory Science group (SERS). Dr Cochrane is an experienced science leader and risk assessor with over 20 years’ experience gained working in academia and industry. Dr Cochrane has expertise in immunotoxicology with a focus on protein allergy and provides scientific expertise and leadership, covering risk assessment and risk management of consumer products and ingredients. Dr Cochrane is also responsible for the development and application of new, non-animal, human-focused approaches to immunotoxicological risk assessment, including research into mechanisms of allergic sensitisation. Dr Cochrane is actively involved in allergy-related external, multi-partner, multi-national taskforces and research projects. Dr Cochrane is co-chair of Food Drink Europe’s Allergen Steering Group, chair of the UK Food and Drink Federation Allergen Steering Group and until recently was a member of UK Committee on Toxicity.

Professor Chris Molloy was the founding CEO of Medicines Discovery Catapult, a national Life Sciences service, following an international career across a range of life sciences disciplines. Chris chairs the IP Advisory Committee for the Association of Medical Research Charities and the Industry Advisory Board for Manchester’s Biomedical Research Centre and Health Innovation Manchester. Chris is a Member and Trustee of the Institute of Cancer Research and holds an honorary chair at the University of Manchester.

Professor Helen Maddock is the Founder, Director and Chief Scientific Officer at InoCardia Ltd, a spin out company from Coventry University, supported by 15+ years of academic research from the Maddock lab. Helen is Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology and Pharmacology at Coventry University and an Honorary Professor at Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick. She has over 30 years of experience spanning academia, life sciences, clinical sciences, and industry — including time with AstraZeneca and GSK early in her career.

Helen completed a BBSRC industry funded PhD studentship supported by GSK and received her doctorate from the Welsh School of Pharmacy, Cardiff University. Followed by post doctoral research funded by the British Heart Foundation, at the world leading Hatter Cardiovascular Institute, University College London. During this time she pursued novel pharmacological and therapeutic strategies to protect the heart from the consequences of ischaemic and reperfusion-induced injury.

She is known for her work in industry for driving forward improved and predictive human relevant preclinical microphysiological system (native, engineered cells and tissue) and computational methods for cardiac efficacy and safety assessment. She is passionate about the development and use of clinically relevant New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) to deliver predictive data that has human clinical concordance.

Helen’s goal is to support the improvement and transformation of how we assess cardiovascular safety and efficacy during pre-clinical development focussed on human-relevant methods — with the aim of making drugs safer and effective. She is the recipient of multiple industry awards including an Innovate UK Women in Innovation Award, and a leading advocate for translational approaches that connect science with real-world impact.

Professor Hughes is a Chancellor’s Professor and Associate Dean of Research and Innovation at UC Irvine. His research focuses on the development and growth of blood vessels, and he is a pioneer in the field of microphysiological systems (organ-on-chip), specializing in the creation of vascularized and perfused tissue-on-chip models. The technology is now licensed to Aracari Biosciences, for which Dr Hughes is a founder and CSO. He served for 10 years as chair of his department and previously served as Director of UCI’s Advanced Cardiovascular Technology Center, and as a Program Leader in the Cancer Center. He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and works extensively with the non-profit organization, cureHHT, where he chairs their Scientific and Medical Advisory Council. In 2022 he received their Lifetime Achievement Award.

Professor Blanca Rodriguez is Professor of Computational Medicine, Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow, and Head of the Computational Biology and Health Informatics Theme at the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford. She aims to accelerate medical therapy development through augmenting clinical and experimental data with modelling and simulation, and machine learning. Her team has contributed pioneering case studies for the Digital Twin vision in precision medicine, and In Silico Trials for therapy testing. She actively collaborates with industry and leads the Computational Cardiovascular Science team at Oxford, an interdisciplinary, diverse and award-winning research team. Originally, she is from Valencia, Spain, where she trained in Engineering at the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia (MSc and PhD). She then worked as a postdoc at Tulane University in New Orleans, USA for two years. After this, she joined the University of Oxford, where she was awarded six competitive personal research fellowships and in 2014 the professorship in Computational Medicine.

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.

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.

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, Reduction 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 Nico Müller is a philosopher based at the University of Basel. He is a Principal Investigator within the National Research Programme 79 «Advancing 3R» and leads a research project about the ethics of phase-out planning for animal experimentation.

His work focuses on animal ethics, the philosophy of science, and science policy. His articles have appeared in journals such as ALTEX, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, and Science and Engineering Ethics, addressing topics such as the limitations of the 3Rs framework, the applicability of transition-science approaches to animal experimentation, and the ethical questions that arise when seeking to advance the phase-out of animal experimentation.

Mona Boyé holds a PhD in molecular biology from Cardiff University. Shortly after her postdoc, she transitioned into technology transfer and bioscience innovation. She is currently Chief Business Officer at Ksilink, a French Tech company specializing in patient-based phenotypic drug discovery.

Prior to joining the FDA, Dr Makary worked at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he was a tenured professor, surgical oncologist, and Chief of Islet Transplant Surgery.

He has led cross-disciplinary research on a range of subjects, including cancer care, obesity, frailty and psychologic reserve in older patients, adverse event monitoring, the Orphan Drug Act, antimicrobial resistance, and Alzheimer’s. Of particular note, he is the co-developer of the Surgery Checklist used in many operating rooms around the world today. He was the first to perform several novel surgical operations, including the first-in-the-world series of laparoscopic pancreas islet transplant operations. He is the author of three bestselling books, has published more than 300 scientific peer-reviewed articles, and in 2018 was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

Denis Noble is Emeritus Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology based at the Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics at Oxford University. He is author of many books, including his latest ones: The Pacemaker Channels of the Heart (World Scientific 2025), and Understanding Living Systems (CUP 2023). The work for which he is most well-known is his demonstration that the origin of the heartbeat lies in its ability to excite itself spontaneously through the interaction of cellular electrical potential and the ionic channels responsible for generating ionic currents. During the last 20 years he has also published widely on evolutionary biology: https://www.denisnoble.com/evolution-publications/.

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, Reduction 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 Wilkinson studied Physics at Oxford University and then worked in industry for 16 years developing microelectronics. In 1994 he started a consultancy in Cambridge supporting the development of microfluidics devices for medical diagnostics. From 2006 to 2019 he was CEO of Kirkstall Ltd, one of the world’s leading Organ on a Chip companies. Although now retired, he continues as a Director of Kirkstall Ltd., and is on the Scientific Advisory Panel of Animal Free Research UK supporting their work to replace the use of animals in medical research and drug testing. He has been a visiting Lecturer for FSRM, Neuchatel, Switzerland, on the subject of Micro and Nanotechnology in Biomedical Engineering for over ten years and was appointed as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Sheffield University in 2019.

Dr Wilkinson is co-author on several papers on in-vitro models of toxicity and a contributing editor of a recently published book on In-Vitro Testing. He has recently published a review article on the status of Organ on a Chip technology.

Professor Dr Paul L Carmichael has worked at Unilever in the UK since 2004, where he is responsible for the global development and implementation of novel non-animal-based approaches for assuring human and environmental health. He has over 45 years’ experience in toxicology and cancer research, largely in the academic arena, and prior to Unilever, he was a Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London in the Faculty of Medicine. A graduate of Surrey University with a BSc in Toxicology and a PhD from King’s College London, he was a postdoctoral scientist at the Institute of Cancer Research for seven years, exploring mechanisms of chemical genotoxicity and carcinogenicity. He currently has close academic links with Peking and Shenyang Medical Universities in China and is a past Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Brown University in the USA. He has been an Endowed Professor at Wageningen University, Division of Toxicology, since March 2020 and is now Interim Director of the NAMs Qualification & Validation Unit of the Centre for Proefdiervrij Biomedical Translation at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He has published over 150 research papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals and serves on many external committees in the UK, US, EU and China. His passion is the advancement of new safety assessment approaches using the inspiration of ‘Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century’ – this can be termed ‘next generation risk assessments’ or NGRA.

Dr Nico Müller is a philosopher based at the University of Basel. He is a Principal Investigator within the National Research Programme 79 «Advancing 3R» and leads a research project about the ethics of phase-out planning for animal experimentation.

His work focuses on animal ethics, the philosophy of science, and science policy. His articles have appeared in journals such as ALTEX, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, and Science and Engineering Ethics, addressing topics such as the limitations of the 3Rs framework, the applicability of transition-science approaches to animal experimentation, and the ethical questions that arise when seeking to advance the phase-out of animal experimentation.

Mona Boyé holds a PhD in molecular biology from Cardiff University. Shortly after her postdoc, she transitioned into technology transfer and bioscience innovation. She is currently Chief Business Officer at Ksilink, a French Tech company specializing in patient-based phenotypic drug discovery.

Steve Race is the Labour MP for Exeter, and a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Department of Health and Social Care. He has previously been a member of the Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee, Chair of the APPG for Pharmacy, Chair of the APPG for ClimateTech, and Co-Chair of the APPG on Nutrition for Development. Steve has had a career in business, providing consultancy support in communications and policy to companies including Aston Martin, British Airways, HSBC, National Grid, and Nissan. He also spent three years on the UK Board of McKesson UK, owner of LloydsPharmacy and AAH, the largest medicines distributer in the country, leading a team of eight people covering crisis, policy, and government communications.

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.