Jack Pryor, PhD

Special Projects | Life Sciences R&D

I work with growth-stage life-sciences companies and academic founders when they need experienced ownership and judgement but don’t need another permanent senior hire.

I work directly with founders and leadership teams, usually reporting to the CEO, CSO or COO. Depending on the need, I can take day-to-day responsibility for a defined piece of work or provide experienced support on a fractional basis.

For project-based assignments, I coordinate the internal and external people involved, make decisions within an agreed remit, and escalate only the decisions that genuinely need executive input.

Depending on the assignment, the closest internal equivalent might be a Special Projects Director, Programme Director, Chief of Staff or R&D Adviser. The common thread is senior ownership of a defined piece of work rather than simply managing a project plan.

The role is deliberately hands-on: senior enough to exercise judgement, work across functions and deal directly with leadership; close enough to the work to actually do it.

Where I Can Help

In practice, I’m most useful in situations like these:

Executive overload. The CEO, CSO or COO is personally carrying an important project because nobody else has the bandwidth or breadth to take it on.

External R&D. An asset or programme depends on several CROs, academic groups or specialist partners, and responsibility for the work is spread across multiple organisations.

Platform to pipeline. A platform company is beginning to develop its own therapeutic programmes and has to make the transition from generating discoveries to running experimental and preclinical development.

Pipeline expansion. Several programmes are advancing in parallel, or a lead asset has moved into the clinic while earlier programmes continue to develop, stretching the capacity of the existing team.

Partnership delivery. A scientific or commercial partnership has been agreed, but making it work requires coordination across different teams, organisations, priorities and ways of working.

Interim ownership. A company is between senior hires, building a new function or growing faster than its management capacity, leaving important work without a clear senior owner.

Programme recovery. A programme has started to drift because ownership is fragmented, decisions are slow or dependencies are not being managed.

Spin-out strategy. An academic team is preparing to spin out a company and has to work out how the business will actually operate within university constraints, limited resources and an evolving scientific plan.

Fractional spin-out support. An early spin-out wants to stay lean, retain control and avoid unnecessary dilution, but needs more experienced scientific and operational capacity than the founding team can provide alone.

How I Work

One person accountable for the whole project - I take responsibility for keeping the work moving across functions, partners and dependencies rather than managing one narrow workstream.

Direct access to senior experience - You work directly with me throughout; there is no junior delivery layer. I report directly to the relevant executive sponsor.

Scientific and operational judgement - I can understand the science while also managing scope, people, partners, timelines, risk and business consequences.

Embedded, not advising from the sidelines - I work with the people doing the work, make decisions within the agreed remit, and stay involved through execution.

A clean handover - I leave the company with a project that has moved forward, clearer ownership, and a record of what has been done, the decisions made, remaining risks and recommended next steps.

What I Bring

My background is unusually broad and grounded in deep scientific and operational experience. I’m a neuroscientist by training, with 15 years across academic research, preclinical drug development and contract research. I started my career as a bench electrophysiologist at a preclinical CRO, delivering whole-cell patch-clamp neuropharmacology and mechanism-of-action studies for pharmaceutical clients.

In 2017 I co-founded Integrated Physiology Services (IPS) - a CRO specialising in preclinical in vivo physiology studies and cardiometabolic disease models. Experimental capabilities spanned metabolic phenotyping, chemogenetics and chronic cardiovascular radiotelemetry, with extensive experience delivering studies involving GLP-1 receptor agonists.

At IPS I designed and delivered research programmes for pharma and biotech clients including Novo Nordisk and Flagship Pioneering. I translated sponsor objectives into executable studies, negotiated scope, pricing and contracts, managed the sponsor-CRO relationship throughout, and intervened when scientific or operational issues put delivery at risk.

As co-founder and COO, alongside my business partner, I led scientific strategy, commercial development, financial management, strategic partnerships, governance, risk and company operations. Alongside this, I’ve worked in translational research, data analysis and scientific communication across academic, commercial and creative settings. Work includes science programming for the BBC World Service and editorial work for Google DeepMind.

I can move between scientific evidence, programme delivery, commercial constraints and communication, and I’m used to aligning scientists, executives, clients, external research partners and other specialists without formal authority. I’m particularly useful where scientific evidence, R&D operations, external partners and business decisions meet.

Engagements

Embedded special project - Usually a few weeks to several months, depending on the scope, with responsibility for a defined project or initiative from setup through delivery or handover.

Fractional support - A few days each month for companies that need experienced scientific and operational input but not a full-time hire. I can provide programme oversight, external R&D management, partner selection and decision support.

Independent review - A shorter engagement where leadership wants an outside view on a programme, partner or decision before committing further resources.