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.
Head of Project Leadership – Dr Ian Walker
Ian joined Acacia Pharma from Sosei R&D (formerly Arakis) where he was Development Group Head and was responsible for leading several programmes through to commercialisation, including AD 237 for COPD and AD 923 for cancer breakthrough pain. Ian has significant development experience gained with a range of pharmaceutical companies, including Reckitt and Colman, Ethical Pharmaceuticals, Quadrant Healthcare, Arakis and Sosei.
Head of Discovery – Nicky Cooper
Nicky was Head of Discovery at Sosei R&D (formerly Arakis) before joining Acacia Pharma in 2009. Previously she held senior research roles at Chiroscience and Almirall, working across a wide range of therapeutic areas. She has initiated and directed a number of research concepts through Discovery into Development and has played a key role in out-licensing of both development and pre-clinical research projects. Prior to Almirall Nicky worked at Amersham International.