

Alastair Dent FRSC
Managing Director, Quality Director
Has 35 years of experience in process development and manufacture for companies including ICI, Kodak and Johnson & Johnson. He is a former chair of the Analytical Biosciences committee of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and is an author and consultant in process development, GMP, experimental design and conjugation chemistry.

Dr David Corser
Operations Director
Holds a PhD in Organic Chemistry, performed a post-doctoral project on antibody-directed drug delivery systems, and was formerly a senior scientist with Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics. He has 25 years of experience in the development and validation of bioconjugation methods, and has a particular interest in selective thiol reduction of monoclonal antibodies.

Sam Scrimshaw
Immunoassay Development Director
Has over 20 years’ experience of the development and validation of immunoassays for a variety of purposes, from forensic testing and bioanalysis, to biomarker, immunogenicity assessment and infectious disease serology. Sam has worked at the Horseracing Forensic Laboratory, GSK, Huntingdon Life Sciences, Abcam and Trinity Biotech, and is experienced in ELISA, RIA, haemagglutination, Biacore SPR, AlphaLISA, lateral flow assays, MSD, polyclonal and monoclonal antibody development and transfer of assays to other laboratory environments including GMP manufacture. Sam joined Fleet in 2015 and was appointed a Director in 2016.

Susannah Maw
Finance Director
Has a BA (Hons) in Comparative Literary Studies from the University of Kent and joined Fleet in 2009. Susy has vast experience preparing both small- and large-scale reagents for major biotech companies, with key areas of expertise in reagent formulation and GMP documentation for production activities. Since 2012, Susy has also been involved in the administration of the company’s finances, being appointed Accounts Manager in 2015 and Director in 2016.

Dr Christopher Blencowe MChem PhD MRSC
Chemistry Director
Studied physical organic chemistry at the University of Reading. He was previously a scientist at Unilever involved with the development of emulsion polymers and polymer conjugates for the application of controlled substrate release. His areas of expertise include Cu/Cu-free azide-alkyne cycloaddition chemistry, self-immolative/degradable linkers, antibody/protein conjugations and conjugate characterisation using spectrophotometric techniques. Having been a key member of Fleet’s chemistry team since 2013, Chris was appointed Chemistry Manager in 2018 and Chemistry Director in 2020.

Dr Lindsay Robertson BSc MSc PhD
Senior Assay Development Scientist
Gained a PhD in Genetics from the University of Kent and her research was published in Nature. She then managed a research team as a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute of Cancer Research, publishing her work in journals such as Cancer Research. Lindsay joined Fleet in 2012 and has worked on a wide variety of assay development projects, including the management of a program of claim support studies for a range of >60 allergy assays developed by Fleet for use with a random-access analyser.

Dr Alison Ellis
Assay Development Scientist
Gained a PhD in Microbiology from the University of Cambridge. She held previous roles with Cambridge Life Sciences and a post-doctoral role at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. Alison joined Fleet in 2011 and works on the optimisation, development and validation of immunoassay methods. She also has responsibility for the Gyrolab(tm) microfluidic immunoassay platform at Fleet and is an expert in its use for assay development.

Dr Matthew Rooney PhD MSci
Senior Assay Development Scientist
Studied vaccine adjuvants models at the University of Surrey. Matt joined Fleet in 2021 having previously worked on a variety of ELISA based assays including the development of high throughput assays for Siemens Healthcare. He has experience in raising polyclonal antibodies for a variety of purposes including point of care testing and has performed roles from proof-of-concept reporting to assays transfer.

Dr Graeme J Dykes PhD CCHEM MRSC CSci SCImem
Bioconjugation Chemistry Senior Scientist
Obtained his degree in Chemistry from the University of St. Andrews and doctorate in Natural Product Synthesis from the University of Manchester.
Over 20 years of experience in Medicinal and Organic Chemistry having worked in Sweden, Belgium, Singapore and the UK. Previous areas of interest include treatments for Obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, Rheumatoid and Osteoarthritis, Cystic Fibrosis, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Psoriasis. Co-author on patents for modulators of GPCRs, PDEs and Kinases.
Graeme joined Fleet in 2021.
Company Management & Senior Scientific Staff:
Consultants:

Dr Nic Christofides
Scientific Consultant
Has nearly 50 years' experience in all stages of immunoassay development and assay trouble-shooting on a number of different immunoassay platforms. He has also extensive manufacturing and market support experience. He is the inventor of a novel free hormone immunoassay format which alone has yielded sales > $200 million. He is a prolific author with 100+ publications and is a contributor to international assay quality panels (NACB, NCCLS).

Julian Duncan
Scientific Consultant
Has over 35 years experience in all aspects of immunoassay development and manufacture and was formerly head of R&D and technical quality at Abbott-Murex and Wellcome Diagnostics. He is particularly interested in the interface between R&D, manufacturing and product reliability and acts in this role with the procurement groups of several non-governmental organisations. He has many publications and patents in diagnostic immunochemistry.

Dr Chris Sheehan
Business Development Consultant
Started his career in R&D with Amersham International, launching immunoassays valued at > $100 million. As business team leader for J&J in an FDA inspected facility, he managed complaint handling, microbiology and R&D teams, moving on to establish a strong international Sales & Marketing track record in IVDs. Alongside his Fleet role he coaches high growth med tech businesses, and is Sales and Marketing Director in a healthcare start-up.