David Grainger

David is a co-founder and Venture Partner at Medicxi. He was previously the Chief Innovation Officer at Centessa and is co-founder of The Foundation Institute for 21st Century Medicine.

David led Medicxi's investment in Padlock Therapeutics (acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb), co-founded XO1 (acquired by Janssen Pharmaceuticals) and was Chairman at Z-Factor and Morphogen-IX (Centessa companies). He currently supports a number of Medicxi portfolio companies, including Rivus Pharmaceuticals (Chairman of Development). Prior to Medicxi, David was a Venture Partner with Index Ventures for four years, having joined the life sciences team in 2012.

Before joining Index, David founded Funxional Therapeutics and the out-sourced drug developers Total Scientific and RxCelerate. In addition, he led an internationally-recognised research group in Cambridge University's Department of Medicine, where he published more than 80 first author papers in leading journals including Nature, Science and Nature Medicine. He ran a widely-read blog on life sciences-related topics, DrugBaron, before moving his writings to Forbes.com, where he is a Contributor.

David has over 150 patents and patent applications in his name, and holds MA and PhD degrees in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge.