Dr. Xavier Jacq Appointed Vice President, Biology

Almac Discovery Appoints Dr. Xavier Jacq as Vice President, Biology

Craigavon, N.I., UK, 05 July 2018 – Almac Discovery, a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and identifying innovative therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and other diseases, today announced the appointment of Dr. Xavier Jacq to Vice President, Biology.

Xavier will be responsible for leading the company’s small-molecule discovery biology team, in addition to playing a key role in defining the strategic direction of both the biology group and Almac Discovery as a whole. Reporting to Professor Tim Harrison, Vice President Drug Discovery, Xavier will be based in the Almac Discovery labs at the Queen’s University Life Sciences campus, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

With extensive experience in pre-clinical/early clinical pharmaceutical drug discovery, both oncology and CNS, Xavier has held positions at Sanofi-Synthelabo, Hybrigenics, Lectus Therapeutics and KuDOS Pharmaceuticals/ AstraZeneca. Subsequently, he was part of the team which co-founded Mission Therapeutics where he held the position of VP Scientific Affairs and Director of Biology. Xavier completed his PhD studies in Strasbourg before undertaking Post-Doctoral research at Columbia University, New York.

Xavier has a deep scientific background and an impressive track record of innovative drug discovery programme delivery. His work has largely focused on novel, and challenging, target classes and he has a long standing interest in, and extensive experience of, deubiquitinase (DUB) drug discovery, which is a major focus of the Almac Discovery scientific platform, and which has earned him an international reputation in the field.

Tim commented on Xavier’s appointment, “We are delighted to have Xavier join Almac Discovery to lead our small molecule biology team. His outstanding scientific background and extensive experience in drug discovery, coupled with his proven track record of delivery, means Xavier is ideally suited to the role. I look forward to working with him to continue to develop Almac Discovery’s portfolio of innovative projects.”

ENDS

Almac Discovery

Almac Discovery (a member of the Almac Group) is a research driven biotechnology company dedicated to the discovery and development of novel and innovative therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and other diseases. Almac Discovery focuses on the discovery to preclinical stage seeking to licence programmes early with a pharmaceutical partner for further development. Follow us on LinkedIn or visit almacgroup.com/discovery.

Almac Group
‘Partnering to Advance Human Health’

The Almac Group is an established contract development and manufacturing organisation that provides an extensive range of integrated services to the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors globally. The services range from R&D, biomarker discovery development and commercialisation, API manufacture, formulation development, clinical trial supply, IXRS® technology (IVRS/IWRS) through to commercial-scale manufacture.

The international company is a privately owned organisation that has organically grown over 50 years and now employs close to 5600 highly skilled personnel. Almac is headquartered in Craigavon, Northern Ireland with operations in the UK, Ireland, across the US (Pennsylvania, North Carolina and California) and in Asia (Singapore and Tokyo).

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