Vice President, Preclinical - London W BD

Job summary

This is an exciting opportunity to lead e-therapeutics' pre-clinical and translational strategy, driving GalNAc-siRNA assets from target validation through IND-enabling studies into first-in-human trials.

Responsibilities

• Portfolio leadership – direct all pre-clinical and non-clinical programmes, setting scientific vision, budgets, resource requirements and timelines across multiple therapeutic areas.
• Target validation & candidate generation – integrate HepNet computational insights with laboratory data to validate gene targets, design GalNAc-siRNA drug candidates with our AI tools and chemistry team (GalOmic platform) and generate decisive PoC packages.
• Translational strategy & TPP ownership – define and maintain Target Product Profiles with input from clinical development, competitive intelligence and key opinion leaders; translate pre-clinical findings into clear go/no-go criteria that guide clinical design, IP and resource allocation.
• CMC & non-clinical toxicology – set strategy and oversee process development, manufacturing scale-up and IND-enabling safety studies; integrate outputs into regulatory submissions.
• Early-phase clinical design – lead the scientific rationale and design parameters for first-in-human/Phase Ib studies, ensuring alignment with GalNAc-siRNA pharmacology, TPP objectives and executive guidance.
• Regulatory contribution – provide scientific content and justification for briefing books, IND/CTA modules and other interactions.
• Budget, timelines & milestones – define scientific milestones that drive operational planning, resource allocation, expenditure tracking and decision points.
• Data interpretation & reporting – review and interpret pre-clinical and emerging clinical data to confirm translational hypotheses and steer next steps.
• Team leadership – establishing a cross-functional collaborative environment, manage project leaders, chemists, pharmacologists and project managers; embed cross-programme learnings to improve speed and cost-efficiency.
• Cross-functional integration – work with Computational Discovery, Clinical Operations, Competitive Intelligence and Scientific and Clinical Advisers to ensure seamless hand-offs from discovery to clinic.
• External engagement – establish and manage relationships with CROs, academic collaborators, consultants and KOLs; represent the company in scientific forums.
• Continuous improvement – champion new methodologies (e.g. AI-driven target selection or in-silico toxicology) and leverage innovative statistical approaches to enhance decision quality and reduce cycle times.

Job description