I gained a degree in Pharmacy and a PhD in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Microbiology from the University of Nottingham and then spent 5 years as a postdoc at the University of Leicester exploring the enzymology of DNA processing enzymes, routinely designing new higher throughput enzyme and cell-based assays. I joined the CRUK (then ICRF) translational drug discovery lab in 1999, ostensibly to design HTS assays, but spent the next 20 years building and managing extensive HTS, assay sciences, structural biology and protein sciences teams. In my final 6 years at CRUK, now Deputy Director of Drug Discovery, I was focussed on negotiating and running “at-scale” multi-project Academia-Industry collaborations. I was the CRUK lead on the 5-year DUB alliance which successfully discovered a number of new inhibitors of deubiquitinase enzymes as potential anticancer therapeutics. With accumulated experience in the collaborative DUB drug discovery space, I was delighted to join Entact Bio as VP Drug Discovery at its formation in stealth mode in 2019. Over the next 2 years we subsequently built the ENTAC platform and portfolio and following the successful funding round I stepped into a consultancy role. I continue to thoroughly enjoy working closely with the Entact Bio leadership team.