David Baker

As Head of Bioscience Metabolism for Cardiovascular, Renal and Metabolism (CVRM), I am as a disease area leader seeking to understand the role of metabolism in disease and guiding our strategy for the early pipeline in Metabolism. This includes participating in the core strategy team and business development activities as well as being a champion for inclusion and diversity.   

Altered metabolic processes play a key part in all CVRM diseases and understanding these changes can be critical in finding effective treatments. My role involves working closely with teams across all our research sites and CVRM research programmes. AstraZeneca has a diverse Metabolism research portfolio, spanning from target investigation to phase 2b studies in diseases such as diabetes, obesity, metabolic dysfunction-associated liver diseases and dyslipidaemia. 

I received my PhD in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of Nottingham Medical School and have worked for many years in the field of drug discovery including work on muscle metabolism, obesity, diabetes, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), dyslipidaemia and chronic kidney disease using both in vivo and in vitro methods. I have been working consistently across CVRM diseases since 2003, with over 40 publications in the field. 

Over these years, I have been involved with some key drug development collaborations in Metabolism, either as joint steering committee member or joint research committee member, such as with Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Silence Therapeutics, Regeneron and Cholesgen. I believe highly effective team working and leadership skills, across both academia and industry, have been vital to my successful career in drug development.