He brings many years of experience in commercialising proprietary drug discovery platforms to Orbit, where he will lead the company's evolution into a service-based drug discovery company focused on identifying peptide candidates against challenging targets such as G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs).

Butt comes to the company from Iontas, where he was most recently chief business officer and a member of the board of directors. The privately held company was sold to FairJourney Biologics in 2021 to create a global antibody discovery services company. Prior to that, Butt was part of the management teams of Abzena and of Antitope as head of business development. Abzena was floated on the London AIM market, Antitope was sold to Polytherics and the newly formed company was renamed Abzena.

“Neil is an accomplished biotech leader across all the areas and competencies that are required to run a successful business. His extensive experience in commercialising platform technologies, as well as his track record in growing and expanding service-based biotech companies, will be critical as we enter a new stage of growth for Orbit Discovery,” said Dr Tom McCarthy, Chairman of Orbit Discovery.