Dr Angus Morrison (L) and Dr Stuart McElroy (R).

NEWHOUSE, UK (29 August 2018): BioAscent Discovery Limited has announced the appointments of Angus Morrison, PhD, as Director of Chemistry and Stuart McElroy, PhD, as Director of Biosciences, to oversee the development and delivery of BioAscent’s integrated drug discovery services.

Drs Morrison and McElroy will head up BioAscent’s teams of expert medicinal chemists and biologists, who have extensive experience working in major pharma and biotech and a track record of taking drugs from concept to clinical candidate.

Angus Morrison joins BioAscent from the European Screening Centre, Newhouse where, as Head of Chemistry, he was responsible for over 30 hit-to-lead programmes.  Prior to this, Angus held leadership roles at Organon, Schering-Plough, MSD, Prosidion and Redx Oncology.  During his time in pre-clinical drug discovery he has worked across a diverse range of therapeutic areas and target classes from hit generation to candidate nomination.  Dr Morrison is a co-author on over 30 papers and patents.

Stuart McElroy has extensive experience of developing and trouble-shooting novel screening assays, designing screening cascades, compound screening, hit validation and supporting hit-to-lead and lead optimisation programmes. Before joining BioAscent, Stuart was Head of Biology at the European Screening Centre, where he led a team of bioscientists in prosecuting and triaging the output of over 90 high throughput screens across all major target classes and disease indications. Previously Stuart helped establish the Dundee Drug Discovery Unit (DDU), working across a wide array of novel drug targets and assays in partnerships between the DDU and both large pharma and SMEs.

Paul Smith, BioAscent’s CEO, said: “Under Stuart and Angus’s leadership our biosciences and medicinal chemistry teams offer world-class expertise and proven ability to deliver. Together with our state-of-the-art compound management, screening and chemistry facilities, as well as our on-site Compound Cloud library, BioAscent is an ideal partner for both large and small pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.”