As part of our Senior scientific leadership team our Research Fellows support our scientific drive and strategic goals across in house and collaborative programs.
Chris Johnson
PhD, FRSC, Research Fellow, Chemical Science
Chris Johnson
PhD, FRSC, Research Fellow, Chemical Science
Chris Johnson joined Astex in 2008, where he has worked on fragment- and structure-based drug design applied to multiple target classes, including PPI antagonists and transmembrane proteins, with particular focus on the oncology and neurodegeneration disease areas.
He has contributed to several small molecule drug candidates that have progressed to clinical trials and is a co-inventor or co-author on over 100 patents and scientific publications.
Prior to Astex, Chris was a medicinal chemist at GSK and legacy companies for more than 25 years in the neuroscience area. He obtained an MA degree in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge and a PhD in Chemistry at the University of Bristol, UK.
John Lyons
PhD, Senior Research Fellow, Bioscience
John Lyons
PhD, Senior Research Fellow, Bioscience
John joined Astex as Director of Oncology in October 2003. He has overseen the oncology franchise at Astex and is associated with multiple successful collaborations in oncology, including with Novartis (Kisqali), Johnson and Johnson (Balversa), AstraZeneca (Capivasertib) and Merck (mutant ras and p53).
He has 30+ years of experience in cancer biology, preclinical and clinical development and was previously at SuperGen Inc., where he was responsible for the development of Dacogen™ marketed for MDS, a form of leukemia. Prior to this, he spent 8 years at Onyx Pharmaceuticals where he led the team that discovered Nexavar™, a signal transduction inhibitor approved in the US and Europe for renal cell carcinoma and hepatocellular carcinoma and Stivarga™ a multi kinase inhibitor approved for gastro-intestinal stromal tumours and colorectal cancers.
Earlier in his career he worked as a post-doc at Cetus Corporation in Emeryville, California, USA. Dr Lyons is a member of AACR. He obtained his PhD in 1989 from the University of Ulm, Germany. He has over 60 peer reviewed publications and 20+ company related patents. He is a member of the Cancer Centre Scientific Advisory Board at the University of Galway, Ireland and an observer on the Board of Directors of Mosaic Therapeutics, Cambridge, UK.
Chris Murray
PhD, FRSC, Senior Research Fellow, Computational Chemistry & Informatics
Chris Murray
PhD, FRSC, Senior Research Fellow, Computational Chemistry & Informatics
Chris Murray joined Astex in 2000. At Astex, Chris helped establish fragment-based drug discovery methodologies and has supported the development of computational tools that facilitate drug discovery. Chris has acted as project leader on a number of projects that have delivered clinical candidates and one project that has led to a launched drug.
He joined Astex from Protherics, a UK-based biotechnology company, where he headed up the developmental team working on virtual screening docking codes and went on to lead the molecular design group.
Chris obtained his degree and doctorate in Chemistry from the University of Cambridge, UK, and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Indiana University, Bloomington, USA before beginning his industrial career. He is a co-author on over a hundred publications.
Martin Sims
PhD, Research Fellow, Bioscience
Martin Sims
PhD, Research Fellow, Bioscience
Martin Sims joined Astex in 2017 to contribute to Astex’s translational activities in oncology, this included the transition of two projects into the clinic and a third to phase 2 completion. In addition to his translational activities, he has led the Astex new targets team and supported multiple projects across the oncology and neurodegeneration disease areas.
Prior to Astex, Martin worked in both the biotech and pharma sectors including at GSK and legacy companies for more than 20 years. At GSK he had both project and departmental leadership roles in the respiratory and inflammation therapeutic areas. He is a co-inventor or co-author on over 60 patents and scientific publications. Trained as an immunologist, he received his PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK.
Marcel Verdonk
PhD, Research Fellow, Computational Chemistry and Informatics
Marcel Verdonk
PhD, Research Fellow, Computational Chemistry and Informatics
Marcel Verdonk joined Astex in November 2000 and was instrumental in establishing the in-house informatics platform, contributed to a project that led to a launched drug, and headed up a group developing informatics, machine learning and structure-based design software applications.
Previously he was at Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre, where he was involved in the development of a range of computational structure-based design tools. Marcel received his Chemistry degree and a PhD in computational chemistry and crystallography from Utrecht University.
Pamela Williams
DPhil, Research Fellow, Discovery Technologies
Pamela Williams
DPhil, Research Fellow, Discovery Technologies
Pamela Williams joined Astex in 2001, where she has supported multiple structure- and fragment-based drug discovery campaigns through the generation of protein-ligand complexes, using both protein crystallography and cryogenic electron microscopy (Cryo-EM).
Pamela was instrumental in establishing Cryo-EM as a technique at Astex and was responsible for setting up Astex’s in-house facility. Pamela was also pivotal in incorporating cryo-EM into Astex’s FBDD platform.
Prior to Astex, Pamela was a postdoctoral research assistant at The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, where she worked on the X-ray structure determination of metalloenzymes involved in xenobiotic metabolism.
Pamela received a Mathematics degree from the University of York and a DPhil in Molecular Biophysics from Oxford University.
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