Meet Dan Thomas, CEO & Founding Consultant at Twenty24 Consulting

Meet Dan Thomas, CEO and Founding Consultant at Twenty24 Consulting. He uses his 25 years’ experience as a drug discovery professional to help his clients—from early academic spin-outs to AI driven drug discovery—with data quality, particularly around reproducibility, digit(al)ization, and the importance of multi-parametric information.

An interview brought to you by Emily, co-author of the Synthesis newsletter. Want to keep absorbing wisdom from experienced folk in drug discovery?Get the "Synthesis" (read: shorter) version delivered to your inbox every other week, or subscribe on LinkedIn.   

Why did you get into drug discovery?

Family ties drove me to pursue a career in this industry. Firstly, there’s my maternal grandfather. Not only was he involved in the development of radar in the 1940s, but he also went on to pursue a successful career in nuclear physics research, eventually becoming research director and site head at the Harwell Research campus. The medical influence came from one of my father’s sisters, who, at a time when female leaders and role models were rare, became Head of Anaesthesiology at a top London teaching hospital. Both instilled in me a passion for scientific research, as well as values of integrity, identity, and inclusion, which continue to guide me today.

However, personal experience, as is so often the case, and curiosity were the ultimate drivers. Growing up in the 1980s and '90s with the emergence of HIV/AIDS and growth of antimicrobial resistance, as well as experiencing the loss of close relatives to different cancers and neurodegenerative conditions, I experienced a mixture of emotions—from fear and anger, to confusion and curiosity. I knew that I wanted to be involved in finding cures, and I was fascinated by the fundamental origins of disease. I became resolute in my commitment to supporting the discovery of new medicines and treatments. It has become a guiding force in my career.

What does a typical day look like for you?

As the founder of a new business, there’s no typical 9 to 5. I have a responsibility to be available for my clients from as far afield as Japan and Australia to the west coast of the US. However, I also have the flexibility and self-discipline to manage my time, ensuring I maintain healthy work habits.  

Usually, I drop my youngest at school, returning home to whatever projects or client work is in my diary for the day. I also try to reserve time for writing and developing new ideas. I’m incredibly fortunate to live 15 minutes from the countryside and beach, so I try to take regular breaks outdoors—it does wonders for the body and mind, and is vital for minimizing mental fatigue. The change of scenery and exposure to natural light always helps me return refreshed and reinvigorated.

In your view, what are the most pressing challenges in drug discovery?

How long have you got?! 

Fundamentally, data quality is not good enough, both in terms of its consistency and dimensionality. It’s astonishing that scientists today are still executing experiments with a significant manual component and capturing experimental information by hand, to be transcribed at a later date. These processes are not only inefficient, but result in the accumulation of substantial errors, due to mistakes in reporting, or the omission of critical information.  Ultimately the experiment can’t be accurately repeated, resulting in inferior outcomes, the worst of which is a false negative. My belief is that false negatives play a significant role in drug attrition. Ultimately, we need higher quality data so we can make clearer decisions.

Another issue is incentivization. Regardless of whether we’re employed in academia or industry, incentives are often aligned with career progression, prestige, or monetary reward—frequently at the expense of the veracity of the outcome.  If more than 90% of projects fail, why do we assume that publications aren’t similarly inaccurate? Collective experience should surely support this assertion. To get a paper published, secure the next grant, or meet annual objectives, it frequently comes down to presenting research in a way that broadly confirms the initial hypothesis, or supports the goal set.  However, experience would indicate that it’s very rare to achieve a perfect outcome, because biology is complicated and inherently variable. Rather than attempting to extract every ounce of information from the smallest number of experiments possible, we should focus on standardization, and increasing the power of the experiments we design. This would ensure that we include all relevant controls and sufficient replication, so we can attribute statistical significance where it exists, rather than where we think it should be. 

The evolution of AI and machine learning presents us with a fantastic opportunity to accelerate discovery; but this doesn’t mean applying it to every situation in an amorphous, unfocused manner. It’s critical that we generate reproducible, multi-dimensional, and relevant datasets for effective training and prediction. Without it, our models won’t deliver the value that we expect or require, resulting in misleading outcomes and bad decisions. It’s something that we need to address. 

What skills should all drug discovery researchers be developing?

1. Be curious and keep an open mind, but retain a healthy degree of scepticism. Just because it has been stated confidently, doesn’t make it true. Remember, we originally believed that the earth was flat! 
2. Be humble. Knowledge isn’t always related to seniority or time served. Some of the most powerful experiences I have had have come from the most unexpected of people or places.
3. Be resilient and self-aware, both as a society and more specifically in drug discovery. What we are doing is hard—we need to own it.  When we get knocked down, which we will, frequently, we must get back up and go again.  We are phenomenally resilient as an industry and have a responsibility to patients to keep moving forward.

Resilience and self-awareness are equally important for leaders who are responsible for making decisions today. In the era of "personalized medicine," where it takes time to find and launch a new therapy, it's striking to think that decisions our leaders take today will have a direct and personal impact on the medicines those same leaders will be accessing. The likelihood is real, given the probability of developing a multifactorial disease like cancer or a neurodegenerative condition. 

Tell me about a recent project that excited you.

I've been working with a European client on an exciting new emerging technology that has potential to transform the life sciences community and beyond. They've got a fantastic team, with phenomenal drive. They're refreshingly open to new ideas, humble, receptive, and they're not afraid to try new things, or do things differently.

What’s a key thing you’ve learned from success (or failure)?

Early on in my career, a “failure,” which, over time I would actually frame as a success, taught me how important it is to retain the courage of your conviction, no matter your level of experience. I was brought into a late-stage project and tasked with helping identify new chemical equity with a particular profile. 

Before progressing further, I wanted to recapitulate results to establish a baseline understanding and confirm existing observations. To do this, I needed to build trust, confidence, and support with the team, so I could ensure that I had the necessary time and resources to deliver the project to the level of quality I expected.  It also required confidence and courage to communicate my findings to senior leadership. 

My findings resulted in the project being terminated, due in part to inaccuracy of the original reference profile. While significant resources had been expended getting to this point, the decision to walk away saved a significant additional amount that would’ve otherwise been spent trying to find something that didn't exist. It taught me not to just say yes, tick a box, and move on, because at the end of the day, once resources have been spent, they’re gone.  The opportunity to be part of a project where the decision was not to progress felt very different and left a lasting impression.  It highlighted the value of empowering everyone to contribute in a way that is truly impartial, focused solely on arriving at the right decision.

What’s coming in drug discovery that you’re excited about?

I’m excited by a number of companies who are using AI to disrupt the way things are done. I’m thinking particularly of Google DeepMind’s spin-off, Isomorphic Labs. They raised $600 million, so they could further leverage the power of AI to deliver new biomedical breakthroughs by reimagining and accelerating drug discovery. There’s also InSilico Medicine, who currently have phase IIa clinical trials running in fibrosis. This is an extremely pernicious class of disease with a painfully personal connection, as my father passed away due to a fibrotic lung condition.  Now that we’re starting to see companies like these expecting and demanding higher data quality, I think that the potential for AI is  phenomenal. It could reinforce and accelerate the opportunities to learn more about the origins of diseases, their heterogeneity and complexity, and transform the future of drug discovery.

I’m also interested to see how using multifactorial design theory and practice will inform and support multiparametric profiling—and how scientists’ roles will evolve as a result. As to adopt multifactorial methods, scientists must also embrace the twin capabilities of automation and digitalization, meaning their roles would evolve from hands-on experimental data generators to experimental designers and data engineers. This would free up more time for reading papers, plus exploring and engaging with the scientific community. Ironically, a shift from the manual to more intellectual work would probably better represent the background of the vast majority of researchers today. 

Any top tips for helping scientists adopt new technologies?

Embrace curiosity, have the courage of your convictions, and don’t be afraid to push outside of your comfort zone. Start by setting a goal to try something new every day—it doesn’t matter what, when, or where. Just building the habit is extremely valuable. It prevents you from having too many groundhog days, which aren’t conducive to curiosity, nor do they satisfy you, or keep you sharp. As a species, humans are constantly evolving. We’re not programmed to stand still—so grasp your inner sabre-toothed tiger!

Who’s helped you most in your career?

1. My wife. She’s been a massive constant throughout my life and career, from supporting me as a postgraduate student at the start of my career through to giving me the confidence and encouragement to take the plunge as I set up my own consultancy company at the start of last year.
2. My first line manager at GSK, Jon Hutchinson. He taught me the true art of biochemistry and enzymology, as well as how to be an effective people leader, particularly emphasizing the importance of humility and respect. He’s recently retired, but remains an incredibly dear friend. I still meet him on the conference circuit or for dinner whenever I can. 
   
3. My first mentor (in the days before mentoring was trendy or even “a thing”), Del Trezise, who gave me the opportunity to co-lead a collaborative industry project with Hewlett Packard. The goal was to provide an industry perspective to help develop a new liquid dispenser based on HP inkjet technology. It was commercialized by Tecan as the D300e. I hear it has done rather well and is broadly loved by lab scientists the world over! I would never have seen that opportunity coming if it weren’t for Del. I’m not only grateful that he thought of me and put me forward, but that he has remained an important influence on my career: He gave me advice and guidance when I decided to launch as an independent consultant.

What’s a book, paper, or article you’d recommend?

Fiction recommendation: I Am a Drug Lord: The Last Confession of a Real-Life Underworld Kingpin by Anonymous

This is a powerful and dark first-hand account of how one man fought his way to the top of the criminal underworld... and what he had to do to stay there. It’s a fantastic read.

Non-fiction recommendation: The Song of the Cell: The Story of Life by Siddhartha Mukherjee

It delves into the complex world of cell biology, in such an articulate way. More science communications should be like this, because so much of what we do is inaccessible to so many people. 

Cultural recommendation: “The Beautiful Game: Building Belief and Resilience in a Younger Generation” - The 2025 Richard Dimbleby Lecture, given by Sir Gareth Southgate 

The former England football manager talks about the importance of identity, connectivity, and culture, particularly in sport, and for boys, which is why it resonates with me. But I think there are so many ways that we all can connect with these themes outside of the digital realm, whether we work in sport, music, science, the arts, industry, or retail.