Jess Hearn-Messenger

Jess is a senior life science consultant with industry experience working across the drug development pipeline in academic, contract research, biotech, big pharma and regulatory agency roles. She worked in DMPK and cardiovascular safety pharmacology at GSK and spent several years at Sphere Medical in biosensor development. Jess also worked for Quintiles in clinical trial set-up and The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency in pharmacovigilance, before joining Alacrita Consulting in 2016. She holds a PhD and MSc in Systems Biology from The University of Warwick and a MChem in Biological Chemistry from The University of Leicester.

Jess specialises in product strategy and due diligence.

Recent projects include:

Due diligence

For various technologies, Jess assessed primary research, identified and interviewed KOLs in the field, and performed in-depth data and literature reviews. Combining this information she highlighted areas of high-risk in an investment together with aspects that might deliver the most value. Recent technology areas include:

• Live microbial product for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease
• Small molecule radio- and chemo-sensitizer in Small Cell Lung Cancer
• Oncolytic Adenoviral Vaccine for Advanced solid cancers
• Chemokine-targeting antibody for inflammatory disorders
• PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor for Alzheimer’s
• Small molecule for Neurodegeneration in lysosomal storage disorders
• Induced pluripotent stem cells as R&D toxicity tools

Product positioning and commercialisation strategy

For several companies and Universities Jess has helped develop a roadmap for clinical positioning and commercialisation for their technologies. She has identified unique selling points, assessed scientific rationale and explored the competitive landscape in order to map out the most viable route-to-market. Recent areas of commercial planning include:

• Mesenchymal stem cells in treating graft-versus-host-disease
• 3-in-1 cell verification/contamination assay
• Novel high-throughput RNA array in drug discovery
• Synthetic DNA primer technology
• Phage product for use as an antibacterial agent
• Two-component system screening in antibacterial drug development

Technology scouting

For various pharmaceutical companies, Jess has scouted worldwide companies and institutes to identify in-licensing and partnering opportunities. She has evaluated each opportunity for its merits with respect to novelty, development stage and commercialisation potential. Scouting projects have included identifying:

• Therapeutics against inflammation and fibrosis in preclinical/early-clinical development
• Antibodies against fibrosis and cancer in preclinical development
• Small molecule therapeutics targeting the DNA damage repair pathway in oncology