CAMBRIDGE, U.K., Feb. 20, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) -- Astex Technology, the structure-based drug discovery company pioneering the use of high throughput X-ray crystallography technology, today announced the appointment of Dr. Glyn Williams to the position of Director of Biophysics. Dr. Williams will implement biophysical methods for ligand screening in Astex's lead discovery programs.
Dr. Williams joins Astex from Roche (UK) where he was responsible for Bio-NMR and Mass Spectrometry. Dr. Williams obtained his D. Phil in 1983 from the University of Oxford and lectured in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Sydney (1985) and University College London (1985-1990). After joining Roche Discovery in 1990, he was responsible for the application of NMR to the structural and dynamic characterization of protein-ligand complexes and the validation of screening results using NMR, as well as the identification of novel ligands for a number of protein targets.
Dr. Harren Jhoti, Chief Scientific Officer and Co-founder of Astex said, "The appointment of Dr. Williams further strengthens our management team and brings significant expertise in applying biophysical techniques such as NMR to drug discovery. We are very excited about integrating these complimentary biophysical techniques into our high throughput X-ray crystallography platform to further accelerate our lead discovery and optimization programs."
Astex Technology is a structure-based drug discovery company pioneering the use of high throughput X-ray crystallography for the rapid identification of novel drug candidates. The company's unique structural screening approach utilizes protein crystal structures to detect the binding of drug fragments, which are then optimized into potent lead compounds. Facilitating this approach is the company's integrated drug discovery platform of HTX(TM) technologies, which covers all aspects of structure-based research, including protein production, crystallization, structure determination, bioinformatics and computational and medicinal chemistry. Astex is focusing its drug discovery approaches on proprietary and public domain protein targets from families and/or pathways. This includes validated kinases, phosphatases and proteases implicated in human disease. Astex has research agreements with Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development, and a structural biology research agreement with AstraZeneca AB focused on solving novel cytochrome P450 crystal structures.
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