Heptares Therapeutics, a clinical-stage GPCR structure-guided drug discovery and development company, has appointed Atul Pande and Roberto Solari to its board of directors. Pande and Solari bring significant industry experience in the discovery and validation of drug targets and the subsequent development of novel medicines.

Pande, M.D., is president of Verity BioConsulting, a drug development consulting firm, and chief medical officer of Tal Medical, a clinical stage medical device company. Previously, he was senior vice president and senior advisor, pharmaceutical R&D at GlaxoSmithKline. For more than two decades he has held various senior roles in Pfizer R&D, Parke-Davis/Warner-Lambert and Lilly Research Laboratories. Pande is a non-executive board member of Autifony Therapeutics and works on the scientific advisory board of Cennerv Pharma, both U.K.-based companies.

Roberto Solari is a visiting professor within the Infection in Airway Disease research group, Respiratory Infections section within the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, where he is focused on the discovery of novel targets to allow the development of anti-viral drugs against human Rhinovirus. Previously, he worked at Glaxo (now GlaxoSmithKline), which he joined in 1986, and worked on inflammation and allergy drug discovery. He has since held a number of research posts in industry working from target discovery through to human clinical trials.