Dr Mark Ashton, Executive Vice President Business Development, Evotec

Dr Mark Ashton talks to Fintan Walton about Evotec's evolving business model, which is based on both contract research services and proprietary research in the CNS field. In particular, they discuss Evotec's successful alliance history with Roche that dates back to 2001. Dr Ashton talks in depth about the terms of these risk-sharing agreements and how they are managed. He also offers an insight into Evotec's future strategic plans.

About Dr Mark Ashton

Dr Ashton has been Executive Vice President Business Development at Evotec since 2005 and a Member of the Executive Committee of Evotec since 2004. Before taking over responsibility for Business Development, Dr Ashton held a number of positions within Operations at Evotec. He became Department Manager in 2001, Director of Chemistry Services in 2002 and took over responsibility for Evotec's entire Discovery Services in 2004, running Evotec's screening, parallel synthesis and medicinal chemistry operations. Dr Ashton is now responsible for all of Evotec's commercial and marketing activities for the Companies' Drug Discovery and Development Services Division.

Dr Ashton started his career by training as a medicinal chemist. He gained his PhD for the design and synthesis of novel steroidal anaesthetics and completed a medicinal chemistry post-doctoral position at Bath University on the synthesis of spider toxins as calcium channel blockers. Prior to joining Evotec, Dr Ashton also had spells at ICI Pharmaceuticals and Organon Laboratories.