David Barros-Aguirre
David Barros is VP within GSK R&D with the current title of Head of the Global Health Pharma Research Unit (GHPRU). This unit has an end2end scope, with more than 90 GSK staff members based in the GSK’s R&D center in Tres Cantos (Madrid, Spain), focused on the discovery and development of novel regimens for the treatment of Global Health diseases including Malaria, Kinetoplastid diseases and Tuberculosis.
In addition to this role, David is the scientific coordinator of several international consortia that with a focus on the clinical development of novel clinical candidates such: anTBiotic (H2020, €6M, 2017-2021) and ClicK-TB (€7M, EDCTP 219-2025) and more recently, two large multi-pharma IMI projects (ERA4TB and Unite4TB, €200M total budget each from 2020-2027), which are focused on the discovery and development of novel drugs and novel combination therapies for the treatment of multi-drug resistant TB from discovery to end of Phase 2.
David has a background in Medicinal Chemistry, completed his PhD and postdoctoral studies in Loughborough University (UK) and Universidad Autónoma of Madrid (Spain) in the field of asymmetric synthesis.
He started to worked for GSK 18 years ago on the discovery of novel antimalarial drugs with the Medicines for Malaria Venture and then move to the field of TB, where he has been leading the discovery and development efforts on the discovery of new anti-tuberculars drugs, that are now advancing to the clinical studies with TB patients (GSK656 as a novel protein synthesis inhibitor and GSK286 (Cholesterol catabolism inhibitor).
David has also a great interest on the second medical use of b-lactam as anti-tubercular drugs. The positive proof of concept achieved in a Ph-II EBA project triggered a large collaborative effort, sponsored by TB Drug accelerator, that has fruitfully led to Sanfetrinem Cilexetil an oral b-lactam that has been scaled to kilogram quantities to be progressed to a PoC study in 2022.