Scientific Advisors

John Davis Ph.D, Scientific Advisor

John Davis is Chief Scientific Officer of the Alzheimer’s Research UK Oxford Drug Discovery Institute. He has over 20 years’ drug discovery experience from SmithKline Beecham, GlaxoSmithKline, Convergence Pharmaceuticals and Selcia. He was a research fellow at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and Salk Institute for 6 years before joining SmithKline Beecham (later GlaxoSmithKline) in 1993. His roles at GSK included director of neurodegeneration research and director of biology for pain and epilepsy research; he was also instrumental in the formation and management of several large collaborations with universities. He was a co-founder of Convergence Pharmaceuticals where he served as Head of Biology from 2010-2013, and then joined Selcia as Director of Discovery. He originally trained as a biochemist, has a PhD from Cambridge University and is the author of over 100 peer reviewed publications and patents.

Professor Rutger J. Ploeg

PROFESSOR OF TRANSPLANT BIOLOGY AND HEAD OF STRATEGY

Director Clinical & Translational Research, Honorary Consultant Transplant Surgeon

Rutger is Chair in Transplant Biology and Director of Clinical & Translational Research in the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences at the University of Oxford. Apart from his research activities he is a Consultant Transplant Surgeon in the Oxford Transplant Centre. He is currently focusing on the establishment of two consortia: the Consortium on Organ Preservation In Europe (COPE) and on the Consortium on Quality in Organ Donation (QUOD) in the UK.

James Hunter, MD

ACADEMIC CLINICAL LECTURER IN TRANSPLANT

James is an academic transplant and vascular access surgeon who has a joint contract with University Hospital Coventry and University of Oxford. His clinical interests include live donor kidney transplant and complex vascular access. His research interests include mechanisms of kidney injury and repair, kidneys preservation and assessment prior to transplant and clinical trials in vascular access. He is the first appointment to the Coventry Oxford transplant network (CoXNet), which is a UK transplant collaborative aimed at improving patient access to transplant by resource sharing between centres.