Omar Aziz joined the Charles River Portishead site as Site Director in July 2022. Between 2020 and 2022, Omar managed the South San Francisco site, including the Discovery and Antibody Discovery teams. Previously he was Senior Director of Biology at the Charles River Harlow and Chesterford Park research sites in the UK. Prior to joining Charles River in 2014 following the acquisition of the BioFocus and Argenta Discover sites, he worked as a research scientist at Pfizer UK Ltd. and Lectus Therapeutics, a boutique biotech company, where he managed projects across multiple therapeutic areas. Omar received his PhD from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 2001 followed by three years of post-doctoral training in the USA at NIEHS, Research Triangle Park. North Carolina, before starting a career in drug discovery at Pfizer, UK.
Omar also leads an Advanced Modalities group within Discovery, growing and aligning our capabilities in Cell, Gene and ASO/siRNA therapeutics enabling novel approaches to meet medical needs. Our goal for the advanced modalities division is to enable end-to-end therapeutic capabilities for non-small molecule approaches to meet patient needs across Charles River.