Gareth Griffiths holds a PhD in Immunology and Oncology from the University of Birmingham and specialises in the isolation and growth of patient-derived tumour cells. After completing his PhD, he gained several years of postdoctoral experience at the University of Manchester before going on to work as a specialist in high content imaging assay development at AstraZeneca. Gareth then co-founded Imagen Therapeutics and continued to develop its CRO services for the next fourteen years.

Following ValiRx’s acquisition of Imagen’s scientific assets, Gareth joins the Inaphaea team to continue his work building complex, well-defined models, including 2D and 3D tumour spheroid models as well as more advanced co-culture models, that will be fully characterised for use in client projects.

Gareth has proven expertise at every level of developing a company, encompassing commercial activities all the way to scientific project delivery, and has specialist knowledge of both high content and image-based screening. This knowledge, alongside his in-depth understanding of the models in the Imagen biobank, will be invaluable as Inaphaea continues to develop and grow.

Of Gareth’s appointment, ValiRx CEO, Suzy Dilly, says: “We are incredibly grateful to have secured the consultancy services of Gareth as we continue to build Inaphaea BioLabs and its capabilities. Gareth’s specialist expertise and experience will be invaluable, particularly as we establish our patient-derived cell line services in the Inaphaea facility. We are thrilled to have him on board.”

Having worked in the drug discovery industry for many years, Gareth has seen a great deal of change in the sector but sees further developments on the horizon: “The US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) recent decision to eliminate the requirement that drugs in development must undergo testing in animals before human trials is sure to drive future drug discovery and eventually bypass the need for in vivo mice studies,” Gareth says. “In addition, we are seeing artificial intelligence (AI) come to the fore in the sector, with researchers combining in silico techniques with human data. The operative word here being ‘human’ - as the only way to get truly accurate data will be to train AI using human-based models, like those we are aiming to develop at Inaphaea.”

Find out more about Gareth Griffiths and the Inaphaea BioLabs team here.