Our Team

Alan Naylor PhD

Alan is Head of Drug Discovery and Co-founder at Pathios. Alan is a medicinal chemist with over 30 years experience in Research and Development within GlaxoSmithKline. He previously held the position of Vice President and Director of Medicinal Chemistry within the GSK Drug Discovery organization and has led strategic, matrix and line functions involving significant international responsibilities. He has an extensive track record of success, across a wide range of therapeutic areas, having played a major role in the discovery of over 30 development compounds, and is a co-inventor of Serevent, a major advance in the treatment of asthma. Alan also acts an independent consultant providing scientific and strategic advice and analysis to major pharma, biotechnology companies, academic groups, capital investment companies and funding bodies on a variety of issues within the drug discovery and healthcare sector.

Alastair Corbin DPhil

Alastair is a Senior Scientist at Pathios, and brings nearly 10 years of experience in biomedical research & drug discovery across inflammatory, cardiovascular, and neuropathic disease. At Pathios, Alastair provides expertise in mononuclear phagocyte immunology, flow cytometry, and in vivo models to support and direct R&D activities. Before joining Pathios, Alastair worked at Ipsen Bioinnovation where he advanced the neurotoxin portfolio by designing and conducting biological and biophysical assays to determine efficacy and binding properties of modified recombinant neurotoxins. Prior to Ipsen, Alastair spent 6 years researching innate immunology, investigating the role of IRF5 in directing intestinal inflammation and repurposing an existing small molecule for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease. Alastair holds a DPhil in Cellular and Molecular Medicine from University of Oxford, and a BSc(Hons) in Medical Biochemistry from University of Manchester.

María José Oliva-Martín PhD

María José is a Clinical Development Scientist at Pathios, bringing nearly 15 years of experience in biomedical research focused on inflammation and immuno-oncology. In her current role at Pathios, she leads scientific and high-quality execution of the RAISIC-1 clinical program, data analysis and interpretation, ensuring regulatory, operational, and scientific standards.

Before joining Pathios, María José served as a Preclinical Senior Scientist at Immunocore, where she led the preclinical efforts for an immuno-oncology target and developed a CRISPR team along with workflow processes for the efficacy and safety assessments of candidate molecules. Prior to her time at Immunocore, she spent five years in academic research, investigating the roles of the cell death proteins caspase-8 and RIPK1 in the activation and differentiation of macrophages, as well as their implications in disease.

During her extensive academic career, María José obtained a PhD in Biomedicine and Molecular Biology from the University of Seville, an MPhil (Hons) in Translational Medicine and Therapeutics from the University of Cambridge, and an MPharm from the University of Seville.

Sam Letcher

Tinotenda Rwodzi

Tino leads the development and execution of Pathios’ scientific, corporate, and brand communications. She oversees communication strategies spanning brand positioning, digital communications and manages the strategic delivery and operational phases of scientific publications.

Liz Robinson

Liz is Executive Assistant at Pathios, providing essential support to the C-Suite and ensuring seamless coordination across all levels of the business. She graduated with a First Class BSc (Hons) in International Hospitality Management and has since accumulated diverse experience from various industries, including IT and Oil & Gas, most recently working as Operations Manager for a design and manufacturing company.

Sanjay Patel

Sanjay is the Clinical Operations Lead for Pathios in Europe for Pathios.

Sanjay has extensive experience developed over a period of 35 years through working at a range of small and medium-sized global and UK-based biotech companies. He specialises in early-stage oncology studies and has experience in the setup, management and successful delivery of global clinical trials and programs for novel investigational medicinal products, including radio-immunotherapy and complex cell therapies and small molecules.

As a Medicinal Chemist by training, prior to clinical operations, Sanjay enjoyed a successful career managing large medicinal chemistry teams and drug discovery projects. Sanjay has a BSc(Hons) in Chemistry from the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology, UK.

Seint Thè Su Lwin, DPhil

As a Clinical Trial Specialist at Pathios, Seint supports various trial activities – coordinates and collaborates with cross-functional teams to ensure the efficient execution of clinical trials. Seint has over 15 years of experience in biomedical research in cardiology, pharmacology, bone biology and oncology. Prior to joining Pathios, Seint was a Senior Scientist in the Pipeline and Pre-Clinical Department before joining the Clinical Development Operations as a Clinical Trial Support Specialist at Adaptimmune Ltd.

Seint holds a DPhil in Bone Oncology from the University of Oxford, Master of Science and Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences from Tennessee State University.

Stuart Hughes PhD

As of 1st of March, Stuart Hughes (previous CSO) has moved on to pursue a new opportunity. We wish him the best and will be continuing to work with Stuart in an advisory role.

Stuart has over 20 years experience in scientific leadership and drug discovery expertise. Stuart has worked across several therapeutic areas inlcuding CNS disorders, immunology and oncology and has deep expertise in guiding early stage drug discovery programs from inception toward clinical development. Stuart has gained wide-ranging experience from positions in both academic and industrial settings. Previous positions include Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Cardiff University, Principal Research Scientist at Eli Lilly and most recently, Senior Director at Vertex Pharmaceuticals. He holds a a PhD in Neuroscience from Cardiff University, a BSc in Pure and Applied Mathematics and an MSc in Electronic Engineering.

Kirsty McCarthy MBA

Kirsty is Co-founder at Pathios and CEO of Molecule to Medicine (MTM). Kirsty has a track record in founding and running two companies based on intellectual property from Australia’s then government funded telecommunications research laboratory in the areas of voice recognition and the analysis of “big data”, the latter directly relevant to bioinformatics applications in life science companies. She is an MBA graduate from University of Melbourne following undergraduate studies at Monash University and The University of Queensland.

Peter Joyce PhD

Peter is an advisor to Pathios and co-founder. He is also co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Greywolf Therapeutics and has over 13 years of experience in biomedical research leading drug discovery projects in immuno-oncology, rare genetic diseases and neurodegeneration. In his previous role at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, he led drug discovery projects, had responsibility for leading a number of target identification teams that led to multiple novel drug discovery projects and was involved in delivering clinical drug candidates. He also pioneered the development of complex neurological assays suitable for assessing the functional impact of optimized compounds. Prior to Vertex, Peter was an MRC Research Fellow investigating the pathophysiology and underlying mechanisms of neurodegeneration and publishing multiple first and co-author publications. Peter holds a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics from the University of Bristol and a BSc in Biochemistry.

James Westcott PhD

James is an adviser to Pathios and is also Chief Executive Officer of ThirtyFiveBio. James brings over 20 years of drug discovery industry experience working in therapeutic areas such as oncology, immuno-oncology and rare disease to enable target identification, validation and clinical candidate delivery. Previous positions include being part of the research leadership team at Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ Oxford research centre, project leader/lead biologist on various discovery projects and head of the primary pharmacology, enzymology and high-throughput screening groups. James has worked extensively on small molecule modality projects and recently with PROTAC and anti-sense oligonucleotide approaches against a range of targets including enzymes, GPCRs and ion channels. James received his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Bristol and 1st class honours BSc in Chemistry from the University of Aston.

Sam Harris

Sam Harris is the Head of Corporate Governance & Business Operations Manager for MTM. She graduated from Aston University with a BSc with Honours degree in International Business and Modern Languages (French), which included a year at one of France’s top Business Schools – EDHEC. Since leaving University she has spent the last 20yrs of her career providing EA & operational support to C Suite Executives and their Leadership teams, ensuring the smooth running of their businesses incorporating all aspects of people, places and processes. Sam has worked in several industries including Consumer Packaging, Mobile software, Information Technology, and prior to joining MTM, 7 years within the advertising technology sector.

Lisa Shoesmith

Lisa is Director of Finance at MTM. Having completed a BA (Hons) in Accountancy & Management Control, Lisa qualified as a Chartered Accountant ICAEW with Mazars in 2000. Since qualifying, Lisa has held various finance and operational roles within both the private and public sector with a focus on working with SMEs and she brings this experience with her to her role here.

Andrea Nisbet

With over 25 years working as an HR specialist, Andrea has successfully delivered projects around organisation design, TUPE, large scale redundancies, performance design, culture and employee engagement, leadership and employee development. Previously, Andrea worked for Berendsen UK Ltd as HR Director for the Hospitality Business Line where she was responsible for the HR function for 3000 employees across UK, Ireland, Denmark and Sweden. Andrea is a Chartered Member of the CIPD, a Mental Health First Aider and a registered practitioner in DISC and Hogan psychometric testing.

Sean Carroll

Sean is an International Business BSc (Hons) graduate from Oxford Brookes University and is Executive Assistant at Pathios. Sean has over 10 years experience in hospitality and customer relations, as well as supporting C-Suite executives across both public and private sector organisations.

Danish Memon

Danish s a lead bioinformatician in MTM where he provides insights from large datasets to understand the biology and therapeutic potential of drug targets in oncology space. He has several years of experience consulting with biotech companies for target identification, evaluation of valuable drug assets, disease indication selection and biomarker development for clinical trials. Prior to this, Danish completed his postdoctoral training in the University of Cambridge and the European Bioinformatics Institute where he worked on integration of multi-omics data to address key questions related to genomic regulation of signalling networks in cancer and characterization of the tumour-immune microenvironment in treatment-naive and treatment-resistant patient populations. Originally from India, Danish has a bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology and a master’s degree in Bioinformatics. He moved to the UK to pursue doctoral studies in computational oncology in the University of Manchester.

Luke Griffiths

Luke has held a variety of roles since beginning his career in finance in 2019, across the retail and publishing sectors. After qualifying as a Chartered Certified Accountant in 2024, Luke now works as a management accountant for Pathios Therapeutics, supporting the team with all financial and performance reporting.

David Smith-Parkin