Our Management Team
David Ricketts PhD
Chief Executive Officer
David joined PharmaDiagnostics in 2008, bringing with him over 20 years experience in strategic and tactical business development within the drug discovery industry. He is a creative and entrepreneurial business executive, with considerable expertise in preclinical discovery research technologies.
With a strong scientific background in computational chemistry, working within discovery project teams at Glaxo and British Biotechnology, he has successfully managed global teams within UK and US-based companies. His experience includes establishing a successful outsourced drug discovery division at Oxford Molecular, where he directed discovery collaborations with a number of international pharmaceutical companies, and creating spin-out companies, including Cambridge Combinatorial and Prolysis.
He has directed business development teams at Inpharmatica, Maybridge (now part of ThermoFisher Scientific) and a variety of SMEs as a business development consultant and interim manager.
David’s international experience includes 3 years living and working in California, and considerable expertise and contacts in the Japanese market, including over 50 visits in the past 15 years. David has a degree in Biochemistry and a Doctorate in computer-aided drug design, both from the University of Oxford, where he studied with Professor Graham Richards.
Sylviane Boucharens PhD
VP, Research & Development
Sylviane is a broad based scientist of international reputation who joined PharmaDiagnostics from Merck in 2011, where she was Head of Global Compound repository and in vitro Screening (MSD, Newhouse Scotland). She has extensive leadership, scientific research and drug discovery experience in the pharmaceutical industry.
Sylviane started her career in the pharmaceutical industry in 1995 when she joined the Immunology Department for the Laboratoires Fournier (Dijon, France). Part of her team’s responsibilities was to explore the mechanism of action of two immunosuppressants in clinical development (phase III and II). In June 2000 she joined Organon Laboratories (Newhouse, Scotland) as team leader for Cardiovascular Lead Discovery activities. She was responsible for managing a portfolio of early drug discovery projects in Cardiovascular from target identification and validation to lead optimisation.
In 2005, she assumed responsibility for the compound repository store and became Head of Assay and Compound Technology. In November 2007 Schering-Plough acquired Organon, then two years later, Schering-Plough was acquired by Merck. Throughout these company mergers Sylviane worked closely alongside her USA colleagues regarding compound library integration and inter-site compound distribution. She has also been involved in a number of outsourcing projects regarding compound management, chemistry and assay development with CROs mainly based in the Far East.
Sylviane attained her Masters in Physiology and PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Grenoble, France, followed by post-doctoral positions at the IN-SERM U366 Laboratory, Grenoble, France and the University of Manchester, UK under the Wellcome Trust International Fellowship.
Julian Abery
Business Development, North America
Julian joined PharmaDiagnostics in 2010, bringing over 20 years of bio-industry experience, gained in both scientific and commercial roles. He has a wealth of experience in the development and commercialization of products and services directed to the global life science market, with an emphasis on North America.
Julian has extensive international experience, gained in scientific, commercial and management positions at leading biotech, instrumentation and service providers, including: Xenova Discovery Ltd (UK); Biacore AB (Sweden, now part of GE Healthcare); and Amphora Discovery Corp. (USA).
Julian has a proven track record of strategic and tactical new business development and the driving of commercial expansion into new markets. He has built successful international sales and business development teams and on-going revenue streams, having developed multi-million dollar pipelines for both contract research services and capital equipment.
He also has a strong scientific background, with 8 years of experience in leading drug discovery teams, coupled with a scientific background in clinical biochemistry (diagnostics) and analytical chemistry, providing a detailed hands-on understanding of the drug discovery process and associated technologies.
Julian received a BSc in Clinical Biochemistry and earned his Masters Degree in Analytical Chemistry from the University Of Greenwich, London, UK.