Amphista Therapeutics, a United Kingdom-based biopharmaceutical company, has named Dr Ian Churcher as its chief scientific officer, it was reported on Thursday.

Dr Churcher has headed the Protein Degradation Discovery Performance Unit at GSK and also led teams developing drug discovery technologies and advancing medicines across multiple therapy areas during an R&D career at Merck and GSK. He also headed research at biotechnology companies including as SVP Drug Discovery at BenevolentAI.

Amphista's CEO, Dr Nicola Thompson, said, 'I'm delighted to welcome Ian to the team. As an internationally recognised leader in the field of targeted protein degradation (TPD) as a therapeutic modality, Ian's scientific leadership will be a tremendous addition to the Amphista team as we progress our TPD pipeline to the clinic. Ian's appointment so soon after last month's USD7.5m Series A financing signals Amphista's determination to deliver on its vision to create a world-leading protein degradation company delivering ground-breaking new medicines in areas of high patient need.'