About Heptares | Scientific Advisory Board
Dr Richard Henderson, Founder and Chair
| Originally a physicist from Edinburgh, Richard started in protein crystallography in 1966 when he was a PhD student working with David Blow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) on the structure of chymotrypsin, which in 1967 was one of the first ever protein structures determined. As a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow at Yale, he characterised biochemically the voltage-dependent sodium channels from nerve membranes. in 1975 and back at LMB, he determined the first ever 3D structure of a membrane protein, bacteriorhodopsin. He then developed the methods for electron crystallography of 2D crystals, and used them to obtain the atomic structure of bacteriorhodopsin in 1990. He served as Joint-Head of the Structural Studies Division at LMB (1986-2000) and Director (1996-2006), while developing an interest in G-protein-coupled receptors and single particle electron microscopy. He is a fellow of the Royal Society (1983), a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences (1996), and has been awarded several prizes for his work (William Bate Hardy, Ernst Ruska, Rosensteil, Louis Jeantet and Gregori Aminoff). |
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Sir Gregory Winter FSE
| Greg is Deputy Director of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), Cambridge. He graduated from Cambridge University in Natural Sciences in 1973, and after a PhD and postdoctoral work at the LMB on protein and nucleic acid technologies, pioneered the field of enzyme engineering in the early 1980s (in collaboration with Alan Fersht), and the field of antibody engineering in the late 1980s and 1990s. He is a prolific inventor and developed technologies for making humanized and later human antibodies for treatment of human diseases. He co-founded two antibody companies: Cambridge Antibody Technology (acquired by Astra Zeneca), and Domantis (acquired by GlaxoSmithKline). He has received numerous academic prizes and also consulted for a range of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. |
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Dr Chris Tate, Founder
| Chris obtained his PhD from the University of Bristol (1989) and then moved to the University of Cambridge (Dept of Biochemistry) to work on a unique 10-helix sugar transporter, RhaT. After obtaining a research fellowship at Girton College (Cambridge) he moved to the LMB to work in Richard Henderson's group on the serotonin transporter where he showed the role of N-glycosylation and the chaperone calnexin was important for protein folding. Chris then worked on the E. coli multidrug transporter EmrE and obtained both 2D and 3D crystals as well as a 3D crystal structure using cryo-EM. |
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Dr Ed Hulme
| Ed qualified in biochemistry at the University of Cambridge in 1968, and went on to obtain a PhD in 1971. After a post-doctoral position at the University of Strathclyde he joined the MRC National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) in 1974 to work on muscarinic acetylcholine receptors under the leadership of Sir Arnold Burgen. With his colleague Nigel Birdsall, Ed pursued the early development of radioligand binding studies, which helped to establish the existence of a family of G-protein-coupled receptors. A highlight of the group's research was to demonstrate definitively the existence of subclasses of muscarinic receptors, a finding later confirmed by molecular biology. Now a senior scientist and group leader at NIMR, Ed has continued to work on the molecular details of muscarinic binding and signalling using protein chemistry, systematic mutagenesis and molecular modelling, to build up a detailed map of the binding site of the M1 subtype, and of the amino acids and their interactions that participate in the signal transduction mechanism. Recently, he has been investigating the mechanism of action of novel selective agonists and pursuing crystallographic studies on M1 muscarinic receptors, hoping, eventually to see the atoms. |
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Dr Gebhard Schertler
| Gebhard was born in Austria and studied chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. From 1984-1989 he did a PhD at the Max-Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Munich, Germany. Major fields of study were in molecular biology, biophysics, and biochemistry of membrane proteins and membrane protein crystallisation. He switched to the field of G-protein-coupled receptors as a Research Associate in the Department of Structural Studies at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in 1989. After an intermediate position as a staff scientist at the MRC in Cambridge, he became a group leader in 1999, and he has made major contributions to the structure of visual pigments and GPCRs using electron microscopy and high-brilliance x-ray diffraction methods. From 3D electron microscopy data he deduced the first experimental template for the seven helices of GPCRs. Together with Brian Kobilka from Stanford University, Gebhard solved the first structure of a human beta 2 adrenergic receptor. |
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Dr Jonathon S. Mason
| Jon has more than 30 years' research experience in the pharmaceutical industry. He started his career as a medicinal chemist, then after five years took up the challenge of computer-assisted drug design, building and leading teams that use in silico design and structural biology to impact drug discovery projects. He is currently a Divisional Director at Lundbeck Research Denmark, responsible for the departments of Early Lead Generation (Chemistry) and Computational Chemistry. From 2001-2006 he was Executive Director at Pfizer UK (MISD: Computational Chemistry, Structural Biology, Medicinal Informatics & Knowledge Discovery); from 1997-2001, he was Director at Bristol-Myers Squibb in the US (Structural Biology & Modeling) and at Rhône-Poulenc Rorer (now Sanofi-Aventis) in the UK, France and US previous to this, as a medicinal chemist then building and leading CADD (Computer-Assisted Drug Design) teams. He has an international reputation in the CADD area, and has pioneered the use of 3D pharmacophore fingerprint methods for both ligand and protein targets to address many drug discovery needs. |
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Dr Patrick P. A. Humphrey DSc, OBE
| Patrick graduated from the School of Pharmacy, University of London, in 1968, with a strong interest in drug receptor theory. After obtaining a PhD in pharmacology at St Mary's Hospital Medical School, he joined Allen and Hanburys, at Ware, U.K., to initiate a project on migraine. His work on cerebrovascular pharmacology led directly to the development of sumatriptan, the prototype of a new drug class for the treatment of migraine. During this time, he became the Director of the Glaxo Division of Pharmacology that was not only instrumental in the discovery of sumatriptan, but also naratriptan, alosetron, ondansetron, vapiprost and salmeterol. Patrick has received a number of important academic honours, including an honorary professorship from the University of Cambridge, as well as the Royal Society's Mullard medal. In 1999, he was awarded the OBE for "services to migraine research". He maintains a passion for research aimed at drug discovery and was latterly the Head of Research at Theravance in South San Francisco from 2001 to January 2008. He has about 300 published scientific papers and book chapters to his name and was ranked 4th in the list of total literature citations in Pharmacology and Toxicology from 1994-2004. |
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Dr David Brown, FRSC (Chair of Drug Discovery
SAB)
| David has over 30 years' experience in the pharmaceutical industry both in research and in senior executive roles. He served with four of the top ten pharmaceutical companies: Zeneca, Pfizer, Glaxo, and most recently with F. Hoffman La-Roche as Global Head of Drug Discovery, Roche Pharma. In this role he had responsibility for the output of clinical candidate drugs from approximately 200 scientists across Roche's five research sites. David has extensive experience of pharmaceutical R&D in all phases from early discovery through clinical trials, and he has experience of leading research in all major disease areas. While at Pfizer he was named co-inventor of the patent for Viagra, and he led the team that developed Viagra through to proof of concept (clinical efficacy) in man. At Roche, David also served on the committee responsible for clinical drug development and he was core member of the Business Development Committee responsible for in-licensing products and for technology agreements and acquisitions. He has also been President and CEO of biotechnology company Cellzome AG. He is now Chairman of Babraham Biotechnology, Chairman of Amura Ltd, and he serves also as a consultant to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. David received his PhD in chemistry from the University of Bristol. He is an Editor-in-Chief of Current Opinion in Drug Discovery and Development, and is author of more than 50 primary and review publications and patents. |
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Dr Paul Leeson
| Paul is a consultant in drug discovery with more than 30 years of experience in major pharmaceutical companies. He obtained BSc and PhD degrees in chemistry from the Universities of Liverpool and Cambridge, followed by postdoctoral work at Sussex University. His industrial career began at Smith Kline and French Research Laboratories, and has taken him to Merck Sharp and Dohme, then to Wyeth (USA) as Head of CNS Chemistry, and from 1997-2011, AstraZeneca, where he was Head of Medicinal Chemistry. At AstraZeneca, Paul’s Department invented >40 candidate drugs, many of which are undergoing clinical development, with one marketed. From 2002-2009, he was Leader of AstraZeneca’s Global Chemistry Forum, a group comprising all Heads of Chemistry worldwide, which managed global activities and implemented improved practices in compound collection enhancement, synthesis, outsourced chemistry, predictive and computational chemistry, hit/lead generation and lead optimisation. His drug discovery contributions, published in >150 papers and patents, have been in the cardiovascular, neuroscience, respiratory and inflammation therapy areas. He has a special interest in the generation and application of lead-like and drug-like properties, with an emphasis on compound quality in relation to pipeline attrition. |
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Dr Mike Tarbit
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Mike is an internationally recognised scientist with over 30 years of experience in the fields of drug discovery, lead optimisation, pharmacokinetics and drug metabolism. He has made significant contributions to the discovery and development of several major marketed medicines (fluconazole, sumatriptan, naratriptan, ondansetron and salmeterol). He spent the first 15 years of his industry career at Pfizer Central Research, after which he joined GlaxoWellcome, where he was Director of Technology & Informatics in the BioMet Division. Mike served on GlaxoWellcome’s Exploratory Research Board, Leads Discovery Management Committee, “Picking the Winners” redesign team (which developed the current GSK CEDD structure), and was responsible for their global Combinatorial Lead Optimisation Programme. After GSK, Mike was Managing Director of Camitro/ArQule UK, a company focused on predictive ADME technology and lead optimisation services, and most recently he was Senior Vice President of Preclinical R&D at Inpharmatica, an ADME and Informatics technology-driven discovery and services company. He now acts as a consultant on drug discovery and lead optimisation and SAB member for a number of biotech and pharma companies. Mike has published over 50 papers on his research. He has a PhD in Biochemistry and a BSc (Hons) in Zoology.
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