Exscientia Ltd.. (11/10/20). "Press Release: Exscientia Recruits Industry Innovator Garry Pairaudeau as Chief Technology Officer".

	Organisation	Exscientia Ltd. (ex scientia)
	Group	Exscientia (Group)
	Organisation 2	AstraZeneca plc (LSE: AZN)
	Group	AstraZeneca (Group)
	Product	AI-based drug discovery
	Product 2	Brilinta®
	Index term	Exscientia–SEVERAL: investment, 202005 financing round Series C $60m led by Novo Holdings + incl Evotec + BMS + GT Healthcare Capital
	Person	Pairaudeau, Garry (Exscientia 202011–CTO before AstraZeneca)
	Person 2	Hopkins, Andrew (Ex Scientia 201604 CEO)

Exscientia, the leading AI drug discovery company, has appointed Dr. Garry Pairaudeau as its new Chief Technology Officer. Reporting into the CEO, Prof. Andrew Hopkins, he brings further drug hunting expertise into Exscientia’s leadership team.

This appointment comes following a year of high growth for Exscientia who in May announced they had secured $60 million in a Series C financing round. This funding is being used to expand the company’s existing portfolio and pipeline by launching new projects and expanding AI as part of their full-stack capabilities.

Garry joins Exscientia with more than 25 years’ worth of experience in the drug hunting and technology leadership space. He will be responsible for focusing Exscientia’s technology on its mission towards becoming the most efficient drug discovery organisation in the world.

Prior to joining Exscientia, Garry was Vice President of Hit Discovery at AstraZeneca and Chair of the Global Chemistry Leaders Network where he was responsible for implementing strategic initiatives and collaborations. During his time at AstraZeneca, he championed developments in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and physics based computational methods, ultimately leading to the companies “Augmented Drug Design” programme. He also successfully established an automation facility in Gothenburg, dedicated to synthesis and integrated screening.

His prior experience in the drug hunting space means that Exscientia’s leadership team now has experience of discovering a total of three marketed drugs. For example, he was part of the team that discovered the life-saving cardiovascular drug Brilinta® (ticagrelor) for which he was a co-recipient of the Malcolm Campbell award from the Royal Society of Chemistry. This and other work on multiple clinical candidate projects has allowed him to appreciate the importance of rapidly identifying the best possible starting points for a discovery project.

“Garry has forged a long-standing impressive career that has combined real-life drug hunting with cutting edge Computational and AI techniques as well as robotics”, said Andrew Hopkins, CEO of Exscientia. “Garry has the rarest of talents of both a deep understanding of the problems of drug discovery and a drive to lead the development of new AI and automation approaches to solve those problems. We are delighted that he has joined us to help accelerate our mission to apply effective AI and automation to revolutionise drug discovery”.

Commenting on his appointment Garry said, “It is exciting to be joining a company whose committed mission is to use AI and automation to revolutionise drug discovery at a global scale. Exscientia’s existing achievements, successfully applying innovative computational approaches to drug discovery, speak for themselves, so I am thrilled to be joining this talented team and I’m looking forward to the challenges that the new year brings”.

About Exscientia

Exscientia is a global leading Pharmatech company, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive drug discovery and is the first AI company to have designed a novel molecule to enter the clinic. Founded in 2012, Exscientia fuses the power of AI with the experience of seasoned drug hunters.Exscientia’s innovative Centaur Chemist™ platform enables breakthrough productivity gains as well as new approaches to improve drug design. Novel compounds are automatically designed and prioritized for synthesis by its AI systems, which rapidly evolve compounds towards the desired candidate criteria for clinical development. Exscientia’s Centaur Biologist™ platform drives the flexible analysis and prioritisation of discovery targets across all pharmaceutically relevant disease space. Exscientia is collaborating with several leading pharmaceutical and life sciences companies as well as building its own portfolio of innovative medicines. Exscientia has its headquarters in Oxford, England with further offices in Dundee, Scotland, the USA and Japan. For more information visit us on www.exscientia.ai or follow us on Twitter @exscientialtd.

Enquiries:

Edelman PR:
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P: +44 (0)78 9685 9386
Anitra.Sprauten@edelman.com

Stephanie Crisp; Edelman UK
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stephanie.crisp@edelman.com

Exscientia:

Mark Swindells; Chief Commercial Officer
contact@exscientia.co.uk

Record changed: 2020-12-23