Apollo Therapeutics, an investment fund focused on driving therapeutic innovation through university collaboration, has appointed Dr Richard Butt as CEO, effective from 23 May.
Dr Butt joins Apollo from Pfizer, where he spent 20 years working in research and development. Most recently he was Senior Director and Research Project Leader, Clinical Research at Pfizer Neusentis within the Neuroscience and Pain Research Unit.
Dr Butt brings valuable experience in drug discovery and development to the fund. While at Pfizer he held leadership positions in discovery biology, drug safety and clinical line functions and has led multiple teams to deliver key milestones from preclinical target validation to the readout of Phase 2a clinical efficacy studies. These programmes have spanned multiple target classes, disease therapy areas and drug modalities, and many have been delivered through collaborations with biotech and academic partners.
Dr Butt has been a member of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry Innovation Board and the Experimental Medicine Expert Network and is a member of the Medical Research Council Industrial Collaborative Training and Careers Assessment Panel. He has a PhD in Biochemistry from University College London and a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of York.
Apollo Therapeutics is a collaboration between AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson and the technology transfer offices (TTOs) responsible for commercialising the research from Imperial College London, UCL (University College London) and the University of Cambridge. The £40m fund will provide translational research funding for early-stage therapeutics projects arising from the three universities.
