John Lucas

Dr. John Lucas brings over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. John joined the Group in May 2018. He took on the role of Chief Commercial Officer in August 2018, becoming Chief Executive Officer in January 2021.

John began his career in biopharma at Genset S.A. (Paris) and Genset Corporation (San Diego, California) where he served as Vice President, Worldwide Intellectual Property. He also held the position of Vice President, Intellectual Property at Transform Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Lexington Massachusetts, a company specialising in small molecule drug form and formulation and at Metabasis Therapeutics Inc., a biopharmaceutical company in California.

John moved to the United Kingdom at the end of 2007 as General Counsel and Vice President of Intellectual Property at Silence Therapeutics plc where he was responsible for a wide range of legal and business matters and played a key role in the corporate transaction with Intradigm Corporation.

After the merger, John became Chief Executive Officer of Cizzle Biotechnology Limited, a company developing diagnostic tests for the detection of lung cancer. Other roles include: Head of Patents, Biosimilars, at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co. KG, Head of New Product Development at Venture Life Group plc, and Vice President, Intellectual Property at Ilika plc.

John holds a law degree (JD) from George Washington University and a PhD in molecular genetics from The Ohio State University. He also holds a Master’s in microbiology and a Bachelor of Education from Ohio University. In addition to his graduate studies, other experience includes a post-doctoral fellowship in cancer research at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland and working as a patent examiner with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.