Ascletis Puts GSK Vet in Charge of Strategy

Allan Baxter, Ph.D. has been appointed chief strategy officer at Ascletis, Inc. Dr. Baxter, who has been an advisor to Ascletis since its founding, has joined the company following a 30-year career at GlaxoSmithKline, where he ultimately served as senior vice president and global head of medicines development, with accountability for GSK’s late-stage drug development pipeline.

“Allan Baxter has been a highly valued advisor in the establishment of Ascletis and its two-pronged business strategy of developing late-stage drug candidates for the China market, while conducting earlier stage R&D aimed at global partnering,” said Jinzi J. Wu, Ph.D., Ascletis’ president and chief executive officer. “As someone who was directly responsible for the discovery and development of more than 20 clinical stage and marketed drugs, he is an ideal person to lead Ascletis’ discovery and development strategy. I am very pleased that he has chosen to join our team in this new role.”

“Ascletis represents an exciting opportunity to develop medicines both for the specific needs of the rapidly growing China pharmaceutical markets and for global market opportunities,” said Dr. Baxter. “I look forward to working with the Ascletis team to build the company’s discovery and development pipeline in the areas of cancer and infectious diseases.”

Dr. Baxter is chairman of Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst, an independent U.K.-based life sciences facility for early stage biotechnology companies, and chair of the Wellcome Trust’s Seeding Drug Discovery Funding Committee. Dr. Baxter is also a non-executive director of Human Genome Sciences and Vernalis.