Dr Martine Keenan has almost 20 years of experience in drug discovery in academia and industry, including as a medicinal chemist with 10 years of professional experience in drug discovery and with 8 of those years in a multinational pharmaceutical company. Following a PhD in natural products synthesis at Kings' College in London, and post-doctoral studies in Germany developing chiral catalysts for asymmetric hydrogenation, Dr Keenan took up a medicinal chemistry position in the neuroscience division of Eli Lilly in the UK. She has expertise in identifying novel hits, designing new analogues, computer-aided drug design, using SAR analysis to develop compounds into new leads and optimising molecules towards drug candidates. As the head of discovery services at Epichem, Dr Keenan has built an international reputation for drug discovery in infectious diseases with over 35 scientific publications and patents. Dr Keenan has successfully managed large multinational collaborative drug discovery projects that have been core to Epichem's success.
