C4X Discovery Holdings plc announced the appointment of Dr Catherine Jane Tralau-Stewart, PhD, FRSC, as Chief Scientific Officer, as of 4 January 2022. Cathy joins C4XD with more than 20 years of senior academic and industry leadership experience. Her broad and in-depth knowledge of drug discovery and translation of early research innovation into robust drug discovery programmes has enabled the development of scientific portfolios as well as the design and negotiation of many initiatives to support effective decision-making. Previously she was Senior Director, Alliances, for Takeda Pharmaceuticals where she was responsible for and contributed to the strategic development and management of academic alliances for Takeda for the US, Australia, Japan and Europe. Having started her career at GSK, she moved into academia where she held senior leadership roles building drug discovery portfolios through to Phase III clinical studies, at Imperial College London, University of California San Francisco and Stanford University-Takeda Alliance for Innovative Medicines. Cathy has a BSc (Hons) Biological Sciences (Biochemistry/Pharmacology) and a PhD (Clinical Sciences) University College Hospital Medical School, National Medical Laser Centre, Dept. of Surgery and ICRF (CRUK). She has been involved in advising on, evaluation and due diligence of over 500 projects and has supported and facilitated the translation of over 40 therapeutic technologies towards the clinic from academia and delivered strategies with effective milestone driven decision-making. Cathy is expert in transforming therapeutics projects from target identification and validation through lead optimisation to Clinical Proof of Concept in many therapeutic areas including Inflammation and Neurosciences. She has published more than 25 publications and is the inventor of three granted patents and is a non-inventor contributor of many more. Cathy received the President's award of Fellow Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), is International Meeting Chair 2022 & Previous Invited Board Director Society of Laboratory Screening & Automation (SLAS), Fellow of SLAS, Member of British Pharmacological Society, is currently supporting the development of Closed Loop Medicine's commercial Steering Group and has acted as advisor to many academic entrepreneurship & commercialization programmes including Stanford SPARK, UCSF, UCLA, UCSD, UC Davis and the NIH.