Dr Lloyd Payne joins Aquapharm Biodiscovery as research director

Scottish marine biotechnology company Aquapharm Biodiscovery has appointed Dr Lloyd Payne as its new research director.

He joins Aquapharm from F2G where, as chief scientific officer, he led several programmes and played a major role in the discovery and optimisation of a new class of antifungal agent with a new mechanism of action transforming it from a promising hit into a clinical drug candidate.

Prior to F2G, Lloyd was a senior scientist at Millennium Pharmaceuticals responsible for the leadership of multidisciplinary drug discovery project teams based in the UK and the US.

He has also held senior scientific and management positions within Cambridge Discovery Chemistry and NCE Discovery (latterly Domainex).

Dr Andrew Mearns Spragg, chief executive of Aquapharm, said: “Lloyd’s appointment further strengthens our management team as we endeavour to accelerate the discovery and development of scientifically validated marine bioactives derived from our unique collection of marine micro-organisms.

“ I feel Lloyd’s appointment marks a step change in our discovery efforts and I’m excited to be working with him to drive Aquapharm’s candidates forward.”
Lloyd will engaged in driving forward the discovery and development of novel bioactives derived from the company’s unique collection of marine micro-organisms.

To further increase the accessibility of this collection, Aquapharm is currently building one of the world’s largest marine derived compound libraries.