Dr. David William Gray is Head of Biology and Innovative Targets Portfolio Manager at the Drug Discovery Unit at the University of Dundee. His role is to develop strategies for people, facilities, equipment and IT to effectively support pre-clinical drug discovery. Dr. Gray’s team conducts assay development, small molecule and fragment screening and an extensive array of mechanism of action and other supporting biology assays to define and characterize small molecules. During his tenure, the Drug Discovery Unit has delivered three molecules that are in clinical trials, enabled the start-up of four biotech companies and partnered four projects with pharma. Dr. Gray joined the university in May 2010.  Prior to this post, he led a unit at GlaxoSmithKline charged with delivering hit discovery and compound profiling to support approximately 40 drug discovery programs. 

Over the course of 20 years, Dr. Gray has been recognized as an innovative scientist with a vocation for drug discovery. He has wide-ranging expertise, contributing significantly to the selection of 10 clinical candidates across multiple disease areas and the recent partnering of a neurodegeneration project with Takeda. He is an author on over 45 papers and has presented at national and international conferences.