Dr. Alex Duncan is a seasoned antibody research scientist and business leader with over 20 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry creating safe and effective medicines for patients in all major therapy areas.
Previously, Dr. Duncan was the Chief Technology Officer and Head of Research at Agenus where he was responsible for closely aligning research and manufacturing technology to deliver manufacturable and innovative development candidates across different drug modalities. In his prior role, Dr. Duncan directed the modernization and optimization of Agenus’ technical platforms and was responsible for all manufacturing and quality systems including those relating to Prophage.
Prior to joining Agenus in January 2015, Dr. Duncan was Managing Director at Actigen, a company focused on the development of immunomodulatory antibody compounds. Before that, he served as Chief Scientific Officer and Head of Research & Development at Affitech A/S (Denmark) and was a member of the AstraZeneca Discovery senior management team, where he served as Senior Vice President Biopharmaceuticals and led the Cambridge UK Discovery site, previously Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT). Prior to its acquisition by AstraZeneca, Dr. Duncan was Senior Vice President Drug Discovery at CAT, where he built a world-class antibody discovery capability. Technology developed by CAT was used to create adalimumab, the first fully human antibody blockbuster drug known commercially as Humira.
Dr. Duncan earned his Ph.D. in Dr. Sir Greg Winter’s laboratory at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, University of Cambridge and held post-doctoral positions at the University of California San Diego.