About us > Management
CEO – Dr Julian Gilbert
Previously Julian was co-founder and Commercial Director of Arakis, a low risk discovery & development company. Arakis raised £49m in private equity and developed a pipeline of five clinical phase opportunities. Its most advanced product opportunities were out-licensed to Novartis (AD 237 for COPD) and Mundipharma (AD 923 for cancer breakthrough pain). Arakis was sold to Sosei in 2005 for £106m. Julian has worked in the industry for more than 20 years and gained broad commercial and technical experience at SmithKline & French, BTG, Mundipharma and Chiroscience.
CSO – Dr Robert Gristwood
Prior to Acacia, Robert was co-founder and CSO of Arachnova, R&D Director at Almirall and Head of Biological Sciences at Chiroscience. He has been responsible for the inception, protection and prosecution of many innovative, commercially attractive, lower risk products across a wide range of therapeutic areas, and for their subsequent regulatory development. Robert has worked within the industry for more than 30 years initially at SmithKline & French and Pfizer.
CFO – Andrew Muncey
Before joining Acacia, Andrew was the CEO of Amura a structure based drug discovery company with pre-clinical programmes in osteoporosis, auto-immune disease and bacterial infection. Prior to that Andrew was CFO of Lorantis, an immunology company and was responsible for raising over £45m of private equity funding. Andrew additionally has corporate finance experience from PwC and Swiss Bank Corporation.
CMO – Dr Gabriel Fox
Gabriel joined Acacia from Hoffmann-La Roche, where he was most recently Head of Global Oncology Marketing. He previously held various roles in development and medical-marketing within Roche’s market-leading oncology franchise. Prior to that Gabriel was Medical Director for NeXstar Pharmaceuticals and Gilead Sciences and subsequently acted as a consultant in both clinical development and commercial areas for a number of large and small pharma/biotech companies. Gabriel undertook his medical training at Cambridge University.