Recognising the urgent need to find a treatment for patients with triplet repeat expansion diseases, LoQus23 Therapeutics was co-founded in 2019 by David Reynolds, CEO and Caroline Benn, CSO when they were entrepreneurs in residence at the Dementia Discovery Fund.
Dr David Reynolds
Chief Executive Officer
David is a highly experienced pharmaceutical research and development leader having worked for nearly 20 years at Merck Sharp & Dohme, Lundbeck and latterly Pfizer, where he was the Cambridge Neuroscience & Pain research site head.
He has held a variety of R&D leadership roles with responsibilities ranging from exploratory biology, through drug discovery, early clinical development and in-licensing in multiple disease areas, with a focus on neuroscience and pain.
Before joining the Dementia Discovery Fund he spent three years as the Chief Scientific Officer of Alzheimer’s Research UK, Europe’s largest dementia research charity supporting academic research, translational drug discovery and providing information to patients and their families about their disease.
David holds a PhD on models of Huntington’s Disease from the University of Cambridge, UK.
Dr Caroline Benn
Chief Scientific Officer
Caroline was an academic researcher for 12 years at King’s College London, UK and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)/Harvard Medical School, Boston, US where she worked with world-leading groups to study the fundamental molecular mechanisms underpinning Huntington’s disease (HD) and to test therapeutic approaches.
During this time, Caroline actively engaged with HD families, which gave her insight into patient viewpoints. Caroline moved to Pfizer for nine years as molecular biology group leader and drug discovery research project leader. Caroline subsequently leveraged structural and fragment-based approaches at Astex Pharmaceuticals as CNS biology lead, adding to her established track record for championing sophisticated molecular and cellular approaches to impact on drug discovery. She left to co-found LoQus23 Therapeutics, where she unites her two passions – HD research and drug discovery.
Caroline is currently a Visiting Professor at the HD Centre, University College, London. She holds a PhD from King’s College London, UK.
Dr David Hardick
Head of Chemistry
David is a medicinal chemistry research leader with more than 25 years’ experience in preclinical drug discovery. He has held a number of senior roles leading medicinal chemistry teams in all phases of preclinical drug discovery culminating in the nomination of several clinical development candidates in inflammation, oncology, anti-infective and CNS therapy areas.
Prior to joining LoQus23, David worked predominantly in the biotech sector, including Xenova Ltd., Medivir, Storm Therapeutics, Entact Bio Ltd and spent nine years at BioFocus and Charles River.
David holds a PhD in organic synthesis from the University of Warwick and was a Wellcome Trust research fellow at the University of Bath for five years.
Dr Amanda Davis
VP of Operations and Development
Amanda is a biotech executive with over 20 years’ experience in the Life Sciences industry and has extensive experience leading the early development of candidate molecules from pre candidate selection through Proof of Concept.
Prior to joining LoQus23 she was Project Director at Biotech companies, Pulmocide Ltd. (7y) and Respivert. Ltd (4y), specializing in strategic and day to day planning, governance and oversight of the delivery of drug development program objectives. Earlier in her career Amanda worked at GSK holding positions of increasing responsibility including 10 years in Global Project Management.
Amanda holds a PhD in molecular pharmacology from the University of Leicester, UK.
Dr Paulina Marzec
Senior Principal Scientist
Paulina was an academic researcher for over 10 years working in France and UK. She obtained her PhD at university of Montpellier 2, Institute of Human Genetics, France, in the group of Biology of Repetitive Sequences where she discovered a novel mechanism driving genomic instability in complex sarcomas. She continued her research at Francis Crick Institute, London, UK where she worked in Simon Boulton’s group to study the mechanisms of DNA damage repair at telomeres in embryonic stem cells.
Paulina transitioned to industry in 2020, joining Freeline Therapeutics, a gene therapy company, where she worked in Translational Research leading Proof of Concept studies in rare monogenic diseases and investigating DNA fate of therapeutics AAV. Paulina subsequently joined LoQus23 Therapeutics in February 2022 where she leads a Target Identification programme, applying her extensive experience in DNA damage at repetitive sequences.
Madeleine Richer
Senior Research Associate
Maddy is a biologist with experience in data analysis, data management, and programming languages such as R and Python.
Maddy has a degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge, with final year studies focussed on developmental biology. She also holds a master’s degree in Systems Biology, with a research project focussed on creating computational models of Alzheimer’s disease pathology.
