David Grainger is a partner at medicxi, a European life sciences-oriented venture capital firm^[1] and chief executive officer of Methuselah Health Ltd., a drug development company doing proteomics research in the longevity space.^[2][3]

He was formerly with Index Ventures, an international venture capital firm with offices in London, Geneva and San Francisco,^[4] in the firm's life sciences practice. He also writes for Forbes.com on topics related to the pharmaceutical industry.^[5]

Reared in England, Grainger graduated with degree in Natural Sciences (Biochemistry) from Cambridge University in 1989, and a PhD in Vascular Cell Biology from the same institution in 1992.^[6]

After receiving his PhD, Grainger undertook post-doctoral research in the British Heart Foundation Smooth Muscle Cell laboratory at Cambridge University.^[7] Following publications in Nature^[8] and elsewhere^[9] setting out his Protective Cytokine Hypothesis explaining the role of the cytokine TGF-beta 1 in the cardiovascular system,^[10] Grainger was appointed principal investigator in the Department of Medicine at his alma mater, Cambridge University, in 1997.^[11]

While at Cambridge University, Grainger founded life sciences companies including FingerPrint Diagnostics (2001),^[12] and Funxional Therapeutics (2005).^[13] FingerPrint Diagnostics merged with SmartBead Technologies to form Pronostics, a molecular diagnostics company, in 2006.^[12][14] Funxional Therapeutics, based on an anti-inflammatory drug candidate spun-out from Grainger's Cambridge University lab, became an Index Ventures portfolio company where Grainger also served as chief scientific officer^[13] until it was sold to Boehringer Ingelheim in 2012.^[15]

Grainger joined Index Ventures in 2012,^[16] and a blogger on topics related to the pharmaceutical industry under the pen name “DrugBaron”.^[17] where he was involved with funding and advising a variety of companies, including XO1,^[18] a biotech company developing an anticoagulant, where he served as chairman and interim CEO before it was sold to Johnson & Johnson^[19][20][21] He co-founded medicxi in February 2016 with fellow former Index Ventures partners Francesco De Rubertis, Kevin Johnson and Michele Ollier.^[1][22]

Grainger has co-authored a number of papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals,^[23] including Nature,^[8] Science^[24] and Nature Medicine.^[25]

Grainger formerly blogged under the pen name “DrugBaron” on a range of topics related to the pharmaceutical industry,^[26] and now has a column on similar topics on Forbes.com.^[5]