Gianni Chessari joined the company in 2002. At Astex, Gianni has served as Head of Modelling before being appointed as Head of Medicinal Chemistry in 2019. Gianni has extensive experience of fragment-based and structure-based drug design and has contributed to the discovery of a number of small molecule drug candidates that have entered into human clinical trials. Gianni obtained his degree in Chemistry from the University of Catania (Italy), his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Sheffield (UK) and he carried out postdoctoral research at the Institute Pasteur (France) and at the Institute of Cancer Research (UK). Gianni has authored more than 70 publications and patents.