Tell us a little about Apollo Therapeutics and the strategic partnership with the University of Oxford?
Apollo Therapeutics is a biopharmaceutical company with an unusual history; it was initially established as a drug development fund by three universities (UCL, Imperial, Cambridge) together with three pharma companies (GSK, JnJ, AZ). Our central premise since our inception in 2016 is that breakthroughs in the medical research required to create innovative new medicines are best found in the world’s top universities. Program selection is agnostic to indication and is primarily driven by the quality of the science and the potential to transform the standard of care. However, translating these breakthroughs into new medicines requires industrial drug development capabilities. We match our world-class drug discovery and drug development capabilities with basic medical breakthroughs made at our top university partners to create important new medicines.
We have approximately 20 programmes in our pipeline, including 6 at clinical stage for areas of high unmet need. Its really exciting to see projects that Apollo first saw at a very early stage, usually pre-publication, actually in patients!
Oxford University signed a partnership with Apollo last summer. This partnership includes pre-agreed collaboration, confidentiality and licensing terms so we can move very, very quickly from first meeting to start a collaboration. Under the agreement, Apollo will identify and assess novel, validated therapeutic targets from Oxford’s researchers for their potential to become important new medicines. Whilst Oxford’s research teams will gain access to therapeutic development expertise and programme funding from Apollo. This will provide more access to clinical trials for patients and deliver faster routes to market for new medicines arising from Oxford’s researchers.
The collaboration is driven by the quality of science and the burgeoning innovation environment at Oxford that has elicited a critical mass of early drug development translational research programmes. Apollo’s drug discovery experts will look for the potential to transform the standard of care globally by supporting the development of new medicines across areas such as oncology and immunological and inflammatory disorders.
Tell us about your role for the company and what’s currently at the top of your to do list?
I'm the VP, Head of Research Partnerships. This means I'm responsible for Apollo's relationships with our university partners (Oxford, Imperial, UCL, Cambridge, Kings, ICR) and for finding new projects for Apollo to partner on. Day-to-day, this involves meeting academics to talk about their research, working closely with each university's business partnering teams departments, and tech transfer office, and reviewing in detail projects that are potentially a good fit for Apollo.
The types of questions we try to answer include i) is there an unmet medical need, would drugging this new target help patients? ii) what is the biological hypothesis for why this target is important? iii) have other scientists or companies already tried to drug this molecule, iv) does the target seem to be druggable, with a small molecule, mAb, biologic or other modality?, and v) what would a drug development campaign look like - do we have the tools, assays and data needed to get started?
Top of my list is to find and start new projects with Oxford.
How did you get to where you are today?
Apollo's partnership with Oxford has offered me a wonderful opportunity to return to the very beginning of my scientific career - I was a Biochemist at Brasenose College, matriculating in 2004. My fourth year project in the Porcher/Vyas lab at the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine (WiMM) had me hooked on research, and I moved to London for my PhD at CR-UK's London Research Institute in Lincoln's Inn Fields, now part of the Crick, studying DNA damage in oncology in Axel Behrens group. After graduating I worked for GSK, followed by roles at Imperial and BTG, a FTSE250 British pharma company, developing my expertise in early stage scientific commercialisation and life sciences business development. In 2019 I joined the UK Dementia Research Institute, to establish and lead their translation and commercialisation activities, including spin-out formation, licensing, industrial partnerships and translational funding, before joining Apollo in early 2024.
My career has included equal amounts of time on the academic and business sides of early stage commercialisation. Doing deals from both sides of the fence had been vital to really understand both perspectives. I love supporting brilliant scientists, and seeing their exciting projects progress from the research lab towards a patient.
What life like outside work?
I spent a fair amount of my undergraduate time at Oxford playing football, and continue to play today - albeit much slower and creakier - for the Wheatley Oaks over 30s ladies team. I also enjoy cycling up and down the Chiltern hills, and getting to the theatre or ballet when I can. I've two small boys so life outside work is happily family dominated, but I've started their love (indoctrination!) of science young with frequent trips to the science clubs at Science Oxford - and still learn something new myself each time too!
If you are interested in working with Apollo Therapeutics, please get in touch with Liz Covey-Crump.