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I head up medicinal chemistry for Research and Early Development within the Cardiovascular, Renal and Metabolism disease area. In this role I lead a team of over 60 medicinal chemists and oversee the strategic direction and prioritisations of the chemistry in our early disease area pipeline. I also sit on the AstraZeneca Global Chemistry Leaders forum to guide the direction of chemistry for the company.
I have a tremendously strong team so a major part of my role is to guide and support them and remove obstacles, so they can focus on the core project deliverables. I truly enjoy seeing people I work with develop and take on new challenges and succeed.
Over the past six years that I have led this team, we have built a strong pipeline, expanded our capabilities into new modalities chemistry and developed an extensive collaboration network.
During my career, I have been the lead chemist or contributing chemist on six drug candidates, including inventorship on 13 patents. I am particularly proud of the inventorship of a FLAP inhibitor which is currently being evaluated in clinical trials. I led the chemistry from the very start of the programme until late lead optimisation. To present this molecule as a first-time disclosure at the American Chemical Society (ACS) Annual Meeting in 2018 was a special feeling.
I achieved my PhD at Gothenburg University in organic chemistry, specialising in bio-catalyzed asymmetric oxidation and went on to do my Post Doc at The Scripps Research Institute in California with Nobel Prize laureate Prof. Barry Sharpless. I was in the Sharpless lab when the Cu-catalyzed click reaction was discovered and it has been amazing to witness how it has impacted so many areas of science.
I am deeply passionate about drug design to help bring new medicines to patients, including how to get all required features into one molecule. I also believe strongly in innovation at the interfaces of scientific areas – for example, the integration of various chemical modalities, targeted drug delivery, machine learning for drug design and drugging RNA using small molecules.
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CURRENT ROLE
2020
2019
2019