Leadership Team

Ashley is Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the North West Lung Centre and the University of Manchester as well as Consultant Respiratory Physician and Clinical Director for the Directorate of Respiratory Medicine and Allergy at the University Hospital of South Manchester. He has been Chairman of the Clinical Assembly of the European Respiratory Society, and past-President of the British Thoracic Society. He was awarded the OBE in 2006 for his Chairmanship of the Medical Technical Committee to the Montreal Protocol for the previous decade. He contributed to the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with IPCC/Al Gore and was awarded a Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2008.

Paul is a serial entrepreneur in the healthcare sector. Prior to moving into the commercial world, he practiced as an emergency physician in both South Africa and the UK prior to reading for an MBA at the University of Oxfords Säid Business School where he completed his thesis with, and subsequently consulted to, Powderject Pharmaceuticals. Over the past two decades he has been involved in several start-ups in the broad healthcare space including medical diagnostics & devices, medical consumables manufacturing, clinical research and pharma logistics. These have been in diverse executive roles including founder, investor, COO and CEO.

He has coordinated and raised investments for several opportunities and successfully exited a number thereof. During his career Paul has also worked as an International Consultant at Investec Bank and as a VP at Discovery Health, a leading global health insurer.

Martin Wickham is a research driven Executive accomplished in senior-level management opportunities with a background in multi-disciplinary commercialisation and research opportunities within the Food and Pharmaceutical space. Martin was previously Head of Nutrition at Leatherhead Food Research, UK, and Model Gut Platform Leader at the Institute of Food Research, UK. Martin is a Biophysicist with over 20 years’ experience in modelling human digestion. His research interests were centred on understanding human gut physiology, through the development of in vitro models of digestion, with particular emphasis on the human response to complex food and pharmaceutical systems. He is a BBSRC/ Royal Society of Edinburgh Enterprise Fellow, has a PhD from the University of East Anglia and has an MBA from the Durham University Business School.

After completing his degree in Chemical Engineering, Rob Barker started his professional career in engineering before progressing to broader management positions including operations, new product development and commercial management at a senior level.

Rob previously headed the European manufacturing, sales and marketing for Probiotec Limited with a portfolio including branded and private label products within the functional foods, vitamins and minerals sectors. Rob has over 20 years’ experience in multi-national corporations as well as early stage and start-up companies. This sees him well placed to help drive Reacta forward as the business expands by installing a world class team in this exciting new area of pharmaceutical food manufacture.

With over 10 years’ experience in preclinical drug discovery, across numerous therapeutic areas and target classes, Helen has successfully progressed programs from early hit identification and hit to lead through to late lead optimisation and candidate selection.

These activities have included the review of HTS and biological screening data, selection of appropriate hits and chemical series for progression, completion of Proof-of-Concept (POC) studies, management of outsourced chemistry and biology, and selection of candidate compounds for preclinical development.

Norman is a qualified Chartered Management Accountant and has 20 years’ experience in arranging early stage business angel and venture capital funding. Following training in accountancy with GKN, he joined PriceWaterhouseCoopers, working on many consultancy assignments with both SME and multi-national companies. Following this, he returned to industry with director roles in the paper manufacturing and food manufacturing sectors in the UK. Norman founded Acceleris Limited in 2000, an FCA regulated fund management and corporate finance firm specialising in EIS led investment transactions. He is a director of Seneca Partners, the parent company of Acceleris and holds other board positions in companies for which Acceleris has arranged finance.