Dr Ian Waddell

Ian is a biochemist with an expertise in Oncology focussed drug discovery carried out in a range settings from large pharma, academic based drug discovery and now in a CRO. Following a degree and PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Dundee Ian spent 2 years as a post-doc split between Scotland and the US. Ian then spent 5 years as a lecturer in molecular medicine in Ninewells Hospital and Medical School before joining Zeneca in 1993. At that time and throughout the merger with Astra, Ian was a very much focussed on classical cardiovascular, diabetes and obesity as a project and line manager. However in 2005 he made the decision to switch therapeutic areas and focus the rest on his career on Oncology. After just under 20 years with AZ and as the Director of Discovery Medicine in the Oncology iMED, with responsibility for pre-clinical translational projects in the UK, Ian moved on. In May 2011 Ian joined CRUK to try drug Discovery in an academic setting as the Head of Biology in the Drug Discovery Unit at the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute. This small team was very successful delivering three clinical candidates in just over 7 years, working in partnership with both big Pharma (AZ, GSK and Genentech), a number of small biotechs (Ideaya, STEMLINE) and Venture capital funds. This experience really enhanced Ian’s desire to work with other partners to drive forward projects and it was time for a change.
In September 2017 Ian joined Charles River Laboratories as Executive Director Biology and he really enjoys the extremely fast paced environment and rapid decision making which is very unlike his time in big pharma and academia. Since then the Biology department has more than doubled in size and is now over 350FTE’s based on 5 sites in Europe. Equally importantly it has built partnerships that allow our partners to new platform technologies such as large molecule discovery (DistributedBio), AI (Atomwise), bioinformatics and complex data analysis (FIOS) and stem cell model development (BitBio). In July 2020 Ian began a transition into the role of CSO for Early Discovery with an aim to strengthen the position and involvement of the scientific ladder community and to build an effective science strategy for the future of the early discovery group.