CHRIS TORRANCE

Chief Executive Officer, PhoreMost

In 2007 Chris founded Horizon Discovery to translate advances in human genome editing into a range of research tools and services to accelerate the discovery of new and improved ‘personalised medicines’. By 2014 he and his colleagues had built Horizon into the fastest growing biotech company in the UK. In the same year, the company listed on the London Stock Exchange with over 100 commercial and scientific staff and significant deal-flow with the pharmaceutical Industry.

Chris founded PhoreMost Ltd in 2014 with the aim of meeting the urgent need to discover the right, first-in-class targets, rather than simply easy targets. PhoreMost focuses on drugging ‘undruggable’ targets using its proprietary SITESEEKER® phenotypic screening technology, to systematically identify cryptic drug sites throughout the human proteome and tie them to useful therapeutic functions. PhoreMost has grown rapidly from a Cambridge University spin-out with early proof-of-concept data to become a technically and commercially validated enterprise, and in May 2018 announced completion of an over-subscribed £11m Series A investment round.

Chris is also an Angel investor to several UK and US start-ups, and a Non-Executive Director on two of those (Exonate Limited and Small Pharma Limited).