Sygnature Discovery’s 2016 Expansion: Two Key Appointments Made

Dr Stephen Young has been appointed as Vice-President, Business Development, joining from Chinese CRO start-up, Hitgen where he was VP of Business Development and responsible for establishing several early research collaborations. Prior to working at Hitgen, Stephen has held business development positions at Pharmacia, Novabiochem and Protherics. Stephen is a highly experienced Medicinal Chemist and has worked in a broad range of therapeutic areas within small and large discovery organisations including MSD, Proteus, Tularik, Amgen and, most recently, Vertex, where he led the Discovery Chemistry department in the UK.

Stephen has a BSc (Hons) in Chemistry and a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Nottingham, and undertook post-doctoral research at the University of Edinburgh in the area of peptide synthesis methodology.

Dr Stuart Thomson also joined Sygnature Discovery in January as Associate Director of Bioscience. He brings over 12 years’ experience in drug discovery and translational research, primarily in the oncology field. Stuart joined Sygnature after two years with Coferon, a New York based biotech company focused on developing novel dimeric inhibitors of protein:protein interactions. Prior to that, Stuart worked at OSI Pharmaceuticals in New York for 10 years where he was involved in translational research studies focused on the EGFR inhibitor Tarceva™, encompassing the identification of predictive biomarkers and mechanisms of drug resistance. In addition he supported drug discovery programs that were initiated as a result of his work.

Stuart has a BSc (Hons) from the University of Edinburgh and a PhD from the University of Leicester. His post-doctoral studies focused on signal transduction pathways and chromatin biology at Kings College and the University of Oxford.