Paul Whittaker PhD
In January 2019 Paul set up On Target Biomarker Consulting to work with clients in pharma, biotech, or the academic community to support the development of new therapies for respiratory diseases (including: asthma; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis; cystic fibrosis; pulmonary hypertension and severe influenza), through the discovery and validation of new drug targets and biomarkers and their translation to early phase clinical studies.
In the previous 4 years, as Vice President Discovery Research at hVIVO, Paul provided scientific leadership to the company’s ambitions to leverage transcriptomic and proteomic data from its human viral challenge model to discover new drug targets and biomarkers for
virus-induced respiratory disease. Paul defined the bioinformatics and experimental strategy for the identification of a drug target for severe influenza
and led its implementation, including setting up the requisite lab infrastructure and team. This work resulted in the successful in-licensing of a clinically-tested drug asset (HVO-001)
against the identified drug target for testing in future clinical studies. HV0-001 has been subsequently acquired and renamed as POLB001 by Poolbeg Pharma Plc. Poolbeg are now developing the drug for use in patients with severe influenza and for cytokine release syndrome following CAR-T cell therapy in cancer patients. European, US and Japanese patents for use of HVO-001/POLB001 in the former indication have been granted, and patent applications for the use in the latter indication have been submitted.
Prior to hVIVO, Paul was Director and Unit Head for Biomarkers,
Respiratory Disease Area, Novartis
for 7 years. In this role he worked with project teams and translational medicine and drug development colleagues to define biomarker strategy and plans for early phase clinical studies in asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cystic fibrosis, pulmonary arterial hypertension
and
idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. He led a team of cell biologists, histologists and bioinformaticians who worked with project teams to develop biomarker packages for these clinical studies.
During his 18 years at Novartis, Paul led a range of projects
including new technology initiatives
(e.g. optical mapping of DNA molecules), target discovery via omics and genetics
approaches (in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma, respectively), drug discovery
projects (e.g. drugs targeting mucus hypersecretion) and setting up and leading bioinformatics and biomarker groups. Paul was also responsible for the introduction of automated sample processing and digital image analysis by the histology
group, and creating the infrastructure required to support the use of human tissue for target and biomarker studies. Paul and his teams contributed to the identification of over a dozen new drug targets, the progression of over a dozen drug discovery programmes
and over ten proof of concept studies in clinical trials.
Throughout his career, Paul has maintained a close connection to the bench science and is adept at helping scientists solve experimental problems
in areas from molecular to cell biology, including omics analysis
and assay development.
