Our People
Dr Stuart Collinson
Chairman and CEODr Stuart Collinson
Chairman and CEO
Dr Collinson’s career includes executive leadership and board roles with public and private life science companies in the US and Europe, and as a partner with a venture capital firm.
He has served on the boards of companies including Affinium Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Debiopharm), Cabrellis Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Pharmion, now part of Celgene), Conforma Therapeutics (acquired by Biogen), Essentialis (acquired by Capnia, now Soleno Therapeutics), GeneOhm Sciences (acquired by Becton Dickinson), NovaCardia (acquired by Merck & Co), and Vertex Pharmaceuticals.
As a life science partner with Forward Ventures, Dr Collinson has led investments in numerous biopharmaceutical companies. Previously, he was Chairman and CEO of Aurora Biosciences (acquired by Vertex Pharmaceuticals). He held senior management positions at GlaxoWellcome (now GlaxoSmithKline) and Baxter International, and was a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group.
Dr Collinson received an MBA from Harvard Business School (Fulbright Scholar), a DPhil (PhD) in Physical Chemistry from the University of Oxford.
Raymond Spencer
Chief Financial OfficerRaymond Spencer
Chief Financial Officer
Raymond Spencer, CFO has over 30 years’ experience as a senior financial officer in biotech. For 12 years he was the CFO of LSE listed Antisoma plc. Whilst at Antisoma he was instrumental in completing the IPO in 1998, several fund-raising rounds that totalled over £100 million, the acquisition of two private US biotech companies and the closing of three licensing deals with big pharma with total upfront licence fees exceeding £100m.
Raymond was CFO for AIM listed Summit plc for 5 years to July 2014 having completed a restructuring of the company, raised over £20m in equity financing and the acquisition of the Oxford University spin-out MuOx Ltd. Raymond is currently part-time founder, Director and CFO of MGB-Biopharma Ltd, which has raised over £6m from angel investors, Scottish Enterprise and won a Biomedical Catalyst award from Innovate UK to progress drugs for treatment of anti-microbial resistance. He has also established his own consultancy company, Bio-CFO Ltd providing services to biotech and cleantech companies. Raymond qualified as a chartered accountant with KPMG in 1979.