Astex Pharmaceuticals ("Astex") is a biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of drugs in oncology and diseases of the central nervous system. Astex was founded in 1999 by Sir Tom Blundell, Chris Abell & Harren Jhoti, and is located in Cambridge, England.
Sir Thomas Leon Blundell, is a British biochemist, structural biologist, and science administrator. He was a member of the team of Dorothy Hodgkin that solved in 1969 the first structure of a protein hormone, insulin. Blundell has made contributions to the structural biology of polypeptide hormones, growth factors, receptor activation, signal transduction, and DNA double-strand break repair, subjects important in cancer, tuberculosis, and familial diseases. He has developed software for protein modelling and understanding the effects of mutations on protein function, leading to new approaches to structure-guided and Fragment-based lead discovery. In 1999 he co-founded the oncology company Astex Therapeutics, which has moved ten drugs into clinical trials. Blundell has played central roles in restructuring British research councils and, as President of the UK Science Council, in developing professionalism in the practice of science.
Steven Victor Ley is Professor of Organic Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, and is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was President of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2000–2002) and was made a CBE in January 2002, in the process. In 2011, he was included by The Times in the list of the "100 most important people in British science".
Sir David Keith Peters is a retired Welsh physician and academic. He was Regius Professor of Physic at the University of Cambridge from 1987 to 2005, where he was also head of the School of Clinical Medicine.
Dame Carol Vivien Robinson, is a British chemist and former president of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2018–2020). She was a Royal Society Research Professor and is the Dr Lee's Professor of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, and a professorial fellow at Exeter College, University of Oxford. She is the first director of the Kavli Institution for Nanoscience Discovery, University of Oxford, and she was previously professor of mass spectrometry at the chemistry department of the University of Cambridge.
Polly Louise Arnold is director of the chemical sciences division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. She previously held the Crum Brown chair in the School of Chemistry, University of Edinburgh from 2007 to 2019 and an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) career fellowship.
Sheena Elizabeth Radford FRS FMedSci is a British biophysicist, and Astbury Professor of Biophysics in the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology, School of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Leeds. Radford is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Molecular Biology.
Peter Malcolm Colman is the head of the structural biology division at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia.
Gideon John Davies is a professor of chemistry in the Structural Biology Laboratory (YSBL) at the University of York, UK. Davies is best known for his ground-breaking studies into carbohydrate-active enzymes, notably analysing the conformational and mechanistic basis for catalysis and applying this for societal benefit. In 2016 Davies was appointed the Royal Society Ken Murray Research Professor at the University of York. Gideon Davies has recently been elected to the Council of the Royal Society.
Jane Clarke is an English biochemist and academic. Since October 2017, she has served as President of Wolfson College, Cambridge. She is also Professor of Molecular Biophysics, a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. She was previously a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. In 2023, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Benjamin Guy Davis is Professor of Chemical biology in the Department of Pharmacology and a member of the Faculty in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. He holds the role of Science Director for Next Generation Chemistry (2019-2024) and Deputy Director (2020-) at the Rosalind Franklin Institute.
David Chaim Rubinsztein FRS FMedSci is the Deputy Director of the Cambridge Institute of Medical Research (CIMR), Professor of Molecular Neurogenetics at the University of Cambridge and a UK Dementia Research Institute Professor.
(Edith) Yvonne JonesFLSW is director of the Cancer Research UK Receptor Structure Research Group at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. She is widely known for her research on the molecular biology of cell surface receptors and signalling complexes.
Roger Lee Williams is a structural biologist and group leader at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology. His group studies the form and flexibility of protein complexes that associate with and modify lipid cell membranes. His work concerns the biochemistry, structures and dynamics of these key enzyme complexes.
Jan Löwe is a German molecular and structural biologist and the Director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, UK. He became Director of the MRC-LMB in April 2018, succeeding Sir Hugh Pelham. Löwe is known for his contributions to the current understanding of bacterial cytoskeletons.
Alan Frederick Cowman AC, FRS, FAA, CorrFRSE, FAAHMS, FASP, FASM is an internationally acclaimed malaria researcher whose work specialises in researching the malaria-causing parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, and the molecular mechanisms it uses to evade host responses and antimalarial drugs. As of May 2024, he is the deputy directory and Laboratory Head of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) in Melbourne, and his laboratory continues to work on understanding how Plasmodium falciparum, infects humans and causes disease. He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in 2011 and awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia in 2019 for his "eminent service to the biological sciences, notably to molecular parasitology, to medical research and scientific education, and as a mentor."
Gurdyal Singh Besra is Bardrick Professor of Microbial Physiology & Chemistry at the University of Birmingham.
Mark Lee Mayer is scientist emeritus at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). His research investigates glutamate receptor ion channels, the major mediators of excitatory synapses in the brain. He has made numerous observations that have changed our view of receptor function and neurotransmission in the brain. Major findings include discovery of the block of NMDA receptors by extracellular Mg and their high Ca permeability; analysis of the permeation and block of Ca permeable AMPA and kainate receptors by cytoplasmic polyamines; and structural studies on ligand binding, allosteric modulation, and gating using X-ray diffraction and cryoelectron microscopy.
Alessio Ciulli is an Italian British biochemist. Currently, he is the Professor of Chemical & Structural Biology at the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, where he founded and directs Dundee' new Centre for Targeted Protein Degradation (CeTPD). He is also the scientific co-founder and advisor of Amphista Therapeutics.
Fiona Hamilton Marshall is a British pharmacologist, founder and Senior Vice President of Discovery, Preclinical & Translational Medicine at Merck & Co. She will become the next president of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research. She previously served as Chief Scientific Officer at Heptares Therapeutic, where she was Vice President of the Japanese biopharmaceutical company Sosei. She was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2016 and the Royal Society in 2021.
