About Us > Management
Dr Julian Gilbert
Chief Executive Officer
Julian has 24 years commercial and technical experience in the pharma industry gained at Arakis, Chiroscience, Mundipharma, BTG and SmithKline & French (now GSK). Prior to co-founding Acacia Pharma in 2007, he was co-founder and Commercial Director of Arakis, a lower risk discovery & development company, which was sold to Sosei in 2005 for £107m. 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 (AD237 for COPD) and Mundipharma (AD923 for cancer breakthrough pain). Julian is a non-executive director of Iota Nanosolutions.
Dr Gabriel Fox
Chief Medical Officer
Gabriel joined Acacia Pharma in 2008 from Hoffmann-La Roche, where he was Head of Global Oncology Marketing. Previously, he 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.
Dr Ian Walker
Head of Project Leadership
Ian joined Acacia Pharma in 2009 from Sosei R&D (formerly Arakis) where he was Development Group Head. He was responsible for leading several programmes through to commercialisation, including AD237 for COPD and AD923 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.
Dr Robert Gristwood
Chief Scientific Officer
Robert has worked within the pharmaceutical industry for more than 30 years initially at SmithKline & French (now GSK) and then Pfizer. Prior to co-founding Acacia Pharma, 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.
Andrew Muncey
Chief Financial Officer
Before joining Acacia Pharma, 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.
