Dr Klara Valko – Founder & Scientific Director
Dr Klara Valko is the founder and Scientific Director of Bio-Mimetic Chromatography Ltd and an internationally recognised pharmaceutical scientist specialising in physicochemical and biomimetic chromatography for drug discovery.
Before establishing Bio-Mimetic Chromatography, she spent 22 years at GlaxoSmithKline and GlaxoWellcome in early drug discovery, developing and applying physicochemical and biomimetic methods to support compound optimisation.
During her pharmaceutical industry career, she supported 27 neuroscience drug-discovery programmes, together with multiple respiratory, oncology and topical drug-delivery programmes, providing experimental physicochemical data, structure–property analysis and predictive models to guide compound design and selection.
Her scientific contributions include the development and application of high-throughput chromatographic methods for characterising:
- Chromatographic Hydrophobicity Index (CHI) and lipophilicity
- Human serum albumin (HSA) binding
- Alpha-1-acid glycoprotein (AGP) binding
- Immobilised Artificial Membrane (IAM) phospholipid binding
- Environment-dependent hydrophobic surface exposure
- Physicochemical and biomimetic properties relevant to drug absorption and distribution
These experimental measurements have been incorporated into models for estimating key drug-discovery properties, including oral absorption, permeability, volume of distribution, blood–brain distribution, tissue binding and drug-efficiency indices.
Dr Valko is the author of more than 120 scientific publications and has written and edited books on chromatography and its application to pharmaceutical research.
Her book, Physicochemical and Biomimetic Properties in Drug Discovery: Chromatographic Techniques for Lead Optimization, describes the principles and practical application of chromatographic measurements for compound optimisation and prediction of in vivo drug behaviour.
She is an Honorary Professor at the UCL School of Pharmacy, where she contributes to teaching and research in physicochemical and ADME principles and the application of HPLC in drug discovery.
During her 22-year pharmaceutical industry career, these high-throughput chromatographic methodologies were applied to approximately 500,000 compounds, supporting compound optimisation across multiple drug-discovery programmes.
Today, the methodologies and models developed through this work form the scientific foundation of the Bio-Mimetic Chromatography platform. Since the company was established, Bio-Mimetic Chromatography Ltd has measured more than 6,000 compounds for pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients across more than 20 companies.