CAMBRIDGE, U.K., May 14, 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. Neil Thompson to the position of Vice President of Biology.
Harren Jhoti, PhD, Co-founder and CSO of Astex, commented, "Neil's breadth of knowledge and experience in the biology of drug discovery will further strengthen our team. His leadership in the areas of lead optimisation against key signal transduction targets, such as kinases, will ensure continued success in our internal drug discovery programs."
Dr. Thompson joins Astex from GlaxoSmithKline where, as Director of the Immunology Platform, he was responsible for specialist cellular and molecular immunology employed in the drug development process. Prior to this Dr. Thompson was Head of the Cellular Immunology Unit, providing support for both small molecule and therapeutic vaccine programs. A major focus has been drug target identification and validation in the field of cellular signal transduction, and Dr. Thompson has been a leader of several drug discovery projects for drug candidate progression in a variety of therapeutic areas. Prior to joining Glaxo Wellcome (now GSK) in 1995, Dr. Thompson held the position of senior biochemist with Wellcome Research Laboratories. He received his PhD in Biochemistry from King's College, London in 1985.
Astex Technology is a structure-based drug discovery company pioneering the use of high throughput X-ray crystallography for the rapid design and development 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(R) 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 kinases, phosphatases and proteases implicated in human disease. Astex has research agreements with Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development focused on lead discovery and optimization, and structural biology research agreements with AstraZeneca AB and Aventis Pharmaceuticals focused on solving novel cytochrome P450 crystal structures.