Management team

Barry Knight

CFO and Company Secretary

Barry Knight is a Chartered Accountant with more than thirty years’ experience as Finance Director, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer with companies operating in the Life Sciences sector.

He first worked with Domainex in 2014 as a consultant and later joined the management team as part-time CFO and Company Secretary, returning to that role in 2019 after a brief spell as part-time CFO for Small Pharma, a London-based biotech. Since 2015, Barry has also been part-time CFO and Company Secretary for Edinburgh Molecular Imaging, a biotech company developing a molecular targeted systemic radiotherapy treatment.

After graduating from the University of Bristol with a BSc in Physics, he qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Josolyne Layton Bennett, a predecessor firm of Ernst & Young and then moved into commerce and industry, joining the head office of Cope Allman International plc, holding a number of finance roles and ultimately being appointed Group Chief Accountant in 1985.

In 1989 he made the move into Life Sciences, becoming Finance and Administration Director of KeyMed, one of the UK’s biggest suppliers of medical equipment, seeing it through ten years of significant growth before joining Trigen, a biotechnology start-up in the cardiovascular field, in 2000.

Barry has subsequently worked for two consultancies serving the Life Sciences sector, as Chief Operating Officer for Kinapse Ltd and as Finance Director for AIM-listed Fulcrum Pharma plc.

David Cronk

Chief Operating Officer

David Cronk joined Domainex in 2021 as Chief of Staff, moving to the Chief Operating Officer role in November 2022. He has over 30 years’ small molecule drug discovery experience in CRO, large pharma and biotech companies. Previously he worked for 15 years at Charles River Laboratories as Science Director, High Throughput Screening Sciences. Through his career David’s focus has been on assay development and high throughput screening using cellular and biochemical assay formats, including screening using high throughput mass spectrometry. In this arena, David has worked on a diverse collection of targets, including GPCRs, ion channels, transporters, protein-protein interactions and enzymes. Prior to Charles River, David led the Molecular Pharmacology team at Ionix Pharmaceuticals, an analgesia-based biotech company and within GSK, and legacy companies, latterly leading the Ion Channel HTS team.

David also has a keen interest in compound management and technologies applicable to in vitro biological assays which support hit finding and downstream chemical optimisation.

Within Domainex, David focusses on ensuring Domainex creates a working environment that attracts and retains the right scientists to provide our customers with the scientific expertise required to progress their projects.

Ray Boffey PhD

Executive Vice President, Medicines Research & Strategic Alliances

Dr. Ray Boffey has over 20 years’ drug discovery experience in CRO and biotech companies. He joined Domainex in 2010, having previously worked at Lectus Therapeutics where he focused on ion-channel drug discovery programmes. Prior to that, Ray led medicinal chemistry teams working on behalf of global pharma companies at Argenta Discovery after starting his career at Oxford Glycosciences.

Over his career Ray has directed programmes from hit identification through to candidate nomination tackling a wide range of biological targets including protein-protein interactions, ion-channels, GPCRs, enzymes (iNOS, caspase, PARP, and kinases) and integrins. These programmes cover therapeutic areas such as oncology, inflammation (including asthma and COPD), Parkinson’s disease, stroke, circadian rhythms, anti-fungal project and pain. As a result, Ray is a named inventor and author of numerous patents and publications.

Ray conducted his post-doctoral research at Imperial College, working with Professor A. G. M Barrett FRS and obtained his PhD from the University of Southampton in 1999, where he researched the ‘Diastereoselective samarium(II) iodide-mediated cascade radical cyclisations of methylenecyclopropane derivatives’ and synthesised the natural product (±)-Paeonilactone B with Professor Jeremy Kilburn.

Natalie Winfield PhD

Executive Vice President, Commercial Operations

Dr. Natalie Winfield joined Domainex in 2005, initially as a medicinal chemist. Having progressed to Medicinal Chemistry Team Leader she transitioned into the commercial field in 2018, initially as Products and Contracts Manager and subsequently Director of Commercial Operations. In November 2022, she was appointed the role of Executive Vice President, Commercial Operations.

During her time as a Medicinal Chemistry Team Leader, Natalie managed multiple client research projects and gained experience of a wide range of biological targets including protein-protein interactions, kinases, proteases, methyl transferases and phosphodiesterases. Natalie’s scientific background enables her to interact with our clients at a technical level, and to offer commercial support for the full range of services that Domainex offers.

Natalie graduated from the University of Bristol and also obtained her PhD there, working under the supervision of Professor Tom Simpson FRS and Professor Chris Willis.

Andrew Ratcliffe PhD

Head of Chemistry

Dr Andrew Ratcliffe ‘AJ’ is a medicinal chemist with over 30 years’ of drug discovery gained across large pharma and biotech companies. AJ has worked successfully in all stages of drug discovery, from early hit identification through to candidate nomination. Prior to joining the Domainex team, AJ has worked at Rhone Poulenc Rorer, Celltech, UCB, Cellzome, Redx Anti-infectives and Novintum Bioscience. During this time, he has taken leadership roles in delivering research projects, cumulating in the nomination of multiple small molecule candidates in the areas of RA (two JAK kinase inhibitors), oncology (mitochondrial disruptor) and MS (two VLA4 integrin antagonists). The VLA4 integrin antagonist, CDP323, was progressed to phase II clinical trials in MS.

Other key areas of research have focused on PDEIV inhibitors, IMPDH inhibitors, JNK and PI3K delta kinase inhibitors (which ultimately led to the identification and progression of UCB5857 into clinical trials), and DNA Gyrase inhibitors as anti-bacterial agents (which led to European funding through the ENABLE initiative). AJ has experience in IP management and was a proactive committee member within the Society of Medicines, a multi-disciplinary society engaged in promoting drug research.

AJ completed his first degree and PhD at the University of Bath under Dr Malcolm Sainsbury, followed by a SERC NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship at Duke University, North Carolina, USA with Professor Bert Frasier-Reid. AJ has over 70 publications covering peer reviewed papers and patents.

Trevor Askwith PhD

Head of Biology

Dr Trevor Askwith has over 10 years’ experience of small-molecule drug discovery research. Prior to joining Domainex, Trevor held the role of Head of Assay Development and Screening in the Drug Discovery Group at UCL, where he ran a number of successful hit ID for novel targets emerging from the university. Before joining UCL, Trevor was a Senior Research Fellow in the Drug Discovery Centre at the University of Sussex where he helped to establish the facility as well as develop and run cell-based and biochemical screening assays to support Welcome Trust and CRUK funded projects. Trevor began his career at Novartis respiratory division working on projects supporting for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and pulmonary arterial hypertension.

Trevor obtained his PhD from the University of Birmingham working with Prof Martin Stevens where he studied the mechanisms of taurine depletion in diabetic neuropathy. He has a broad experience of biochemical and cellular assays, high throughput screening and both ‘conventional’ and fragment-based research projects and has worked on many different target classes and therapeutic areas.

Scott Martin PhD

Head of Bioanalytical Sciences

Dr Scott Martin has 25 years of experience in bioanalytical/analytical mass spectrometry within drug discovery and development, predominately gained in large pharma. He has successfully supported projects throughout the drug discovery and development process by driving scientific innovation, matrix managing teams and providing expert opinion in the fields of biotransformation and bioanalysis.  Before joining Domainex, Scott worked for AstraZeneca for 20 years as an associate principal scientist within the Oncology DMPK department.  Previously, he has held positions in analytical/bioanalytical science at Roche, GlaxoWellcome, Zeneca agrochemicals and a large contract research organisation (CRO).

While at AstraZeneca Scott successfully completed a part time PhD in drug metabolism entitled ‘Identification and Mechanistic Study of Novel Drug Metabolites by LC-MS’ at Sheffield Hallam University and has authored/co-authored 20 papers in peer reviewed journals.

Philip Fallon PhD

Deputy Head of Chemistry

Dr Philip Fallon is a medicinal chemist with 20 years’ industrial experience of small-molecule drug discovery research. Prior to his fifteen years’ at Domainex, Philip held research positions at BioFocus, Medivir, and Aventis and Rhone-Poulenc CropScience.

Philip has worked successfully in all stages of drug discovery, from early hit identification through to lead optimisation. He is a named inventor on several patents, has presented research at international conferences and was part of the project team which invented MIV-711, a Cathepsin K inhibitor, currently in Ph II clinical trials for osteoarthritis. During his career, Philip has gained experience in several therapeutic areas (oncology, anti-coagulants, liver disease) and target classes (proteases, protein-protein interactions including RAS, neuropilin and lysine methyltransferases).

Philip graduated from the University of Cambridge and obtained his PhD from Nottingham University working under the supervision of with Dr Mark Mascal.