Michael Winther

Michael joined Engine in 2019 with over thirty years of experience in research and drug discovery. Previously he was Associate Director at the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) after moving to Singapore in 2014 to take on the challenge of managing Singapore’s national pharmacogenomics programme SAPhIRE. He was also responsible for business development and management of intellectual property at GIS.

Prior to moving to Singapore he had a long career working in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry in Canada and the UK, as Senior Director of Drug Discovery at Xenon Pharmaceuticals in Vancouver and as President of QuantaNova Canada in Nova Scotia. His work resulted in several novel drug targets leading to compounds tested in clinical studies.

Michael graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, obtained a PhD from the University of Stirling, Scotland and conducted postdoctoral training at the University of Essex. His work has spanned diverse areas including vaccine, biological products, lipids, anti-sense oligonucleotides and small molecule drug discovery.