ApconiX Welcomes Maria Dominguez
ApconiX is delighted to welcome Maria Dominguez as Head of DMPK in the Project Toxicology and DMPK Team. She will be working with Dr Richard Knight to grow our team of DMPK experts experienced in developing strategies, designing studies, interpreting data, providing risk mitigation plans and ensuring that optimised compounds are selected for clinical development.
Career
Maria grew up in Spain and studied Chemistry at University of Santiago de Compostela. After teaching privately for a few years, she moved to the UK and got her first industry job at Covance, in Harrogate, as a mass spectrometry analyst. She later moved to Scotland and became a bioanalyst in Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics (DMPK) for Quintiles, where she was responsible for method development, validation and analysis of samples from clinical studies.
Maria soon realised that she wanted to focus on what happened behind those samples rather than their analysis, and applied for a position of Senior Scientist in DMPK at Merck in Harlow, near London. As the DMPK representative of a CNS discovery program, Maria was in charge of interpreting the results and perform studies to elucidate the in vitro DMPK properties of compounds. After a couple of years in the lab, she started leading projects from a DMPK perspective, partnering with chemists and biologists.
After 7 years in the UK, Maria and her family decided to move back to Spain to soak up some sun and joined Almirall in Barcelona. Starting as a Senior Scientist, she grew to become a team leader in Discovery DMPK, which sparked her affinity for management, developing teams and people to the best of their abilities. Over the years she was promoted to Head of DMPK with compounds in several therapeutic areas, including immunology, respiratory and dermatology.
Maria then joined Janssen (Johnson and Johnson) in Belgium as the head of EU discovery DMPK project leaders. She supported the discovery portfolio in Europe and Asia, managing the strategy and drive of the global pharmacokinetic activities and leading optimization and selection of drug candidates from more than 20 projects across different therapeutic areas, including infectious disease, immunology, neuroscience and oncology.
In 2021, Exscientia, a biotech in the UK, recruited Maria with an offer to set up a pre-clinical development team from scratch. She accepted the position of Vice president in Preclinical Development and recruited 10 highly talented senior DMPK, Toxicology and PKPD modelling scientists across the UK and the US. As part of her role she also oversaw and/or authored various regulatory documents (e.g., pre-IND briefing documents, INDs, IBs, etc).
Four years later, Maria moved back to Spain and decided to take the next step in her career in DMPK consultancy with ApconiX.
Working at ApconiX
As much as she enjoys the science, Maria enjoys managing people and teams. Having worked with Claire Sadler, one of our consultant, in the past, she knew about ApconiX and reached out to Richard about building a DMPK team at ApconiX. Within her first 3 weeks, she already obtained 3 clients.
Maria commented: "I really wanted a company that resonated with my ethos. Many people had told me great things about ApconiX, and the culture is super important for me. I have interacted with a lot of consultants throughout my career. Some experiences were great, others were not so great. And I wanted a place where that experience of consultancy was great for both the employee as well as for the company and the clients."
Richard commented: "Maria is a fantastic person to lead our DMPK team and is already having a major impact on our clients' DMPK strategies and decision-making. Not only does Maria bring great scientific and leadership qualities from her pharma, biotech and CRO experience, her warm, engaging personality is a perfect fit for ApconiX and for our clients."
Interests outside of work
Maria is very busy with 3 teenagers, joking "Nowadays I am a part-time taxi driver". She enjoys travelling and gastronomy, as well as relaxing by the beach. She also likes to stay active and goes to gym regularly for step and spinning classes. In recent years Maria also discovered a meaningful passion for arts and crafts.
