News and Press
Dr. Laurence Barker Announced as the New Head of Business Development
News
SEP
2008
Syntaxin are delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Laurence Barker to the newly created role of Head of Business Development.
Dr. Barker brings a wealth of experience to the Syntaxin team
Dr. Barker joins Syntaxin from MorphoSys AG where he held the position of Associate Director, Business Development.
During this time, he led the negotiations and completed several complex licensing deals and strategic collaborations with US, European and Japanese organisations, including those with the large Japanese pharma companies Daiichi-Sankyo, Astellas and Shionogi. He was also a key member of the MorphoSys team that negotiated and signed the transformational strategic partnership with Novartis in 2007. Prior to MorphoSys, Dr. Barker was Project Manager at Sympore GmbH, a private drug discovery company, where he led a multidisciplinary project team within research and early development.
At Syntaxin, Dr. Barker will assume responsibility for the implementation of the business development and commercial strategies surrounding the Company’s proprietary re-targeted endopeptidase discovery platform. He has an MSc in Biochemistry and Cellular & Molecular biology from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from the Eberhard-Karls University of Tübingen, Germany, and an MBA from the Judge Business School, Cambridge University.
Patrick Doyle, CEO of Syntaxin, said: “We are delighted to welcome Laurence to the Syntaxin team. He brings to Syntaxin an impressive track record in business development particularly in innovative platform technologies and this will be of great benefit to the Company as we look to strengthen and expand our growing business development efforts.”