Sygnature Discovery has appointed Dr Stephen Young and Dr Stuart Thomson to its senior business and bioscience teams.
Dr Young (picutred right) takes on the role of vice president of business development at the Nottingham, UK-based pharma and biotech service provider.
He brings experience from Hitgen, a Chinese CRO start-up, where he was vice president of business development responsible for several early research collaborations, and previously held business development positions at Novabiochem, Pharmacia and Protherics.
Dr Young also has experience a medicinal chemist across a range of therapeutic areas having worked at Amgen, MSD, Proteus, Tularik and most recently as head of Vertex’s discovery chemistry department in the UK.
Meanwhile, Dr Stuart Thomson (pictured left) joins Sygnature Discovery as associate director of bioscience.
He has over 12 years of drug discovery and translational research experience, largely in oncology, and moves to the firm from Coferon.
Prior to joining US biotech Dr Thomson spent 10 years at OSI Pharmaceutical where he supported drug discovery programmes initiated as a result of his work in transnational research studies at the company.
Dr Simon Hurst, founder and chief executive officer of Sygnature Discovery, said: “We are delighted to welcome both Stephen and Stuart.
“Stephen will be focusing on business development in Europe and West Coast USA, working in Paul Clewlow’s team.
“Stuart joins our ever-expanding bioscience department which we set up in 2011 and will work closely with Dr John Unitt.”