Astex Therapeutics
www.astex-therapeutics.com/Astex Therapeutics Ltd is a biotech company that has a fragment-based approach to structure-based drug design that involves applying high-throughput X-ray crystallography to solve protein structures and using the structures to detect binding of low-molecular-weight drug fragments, which are then optimized into leads through conventional medicinal chemistry.
In December 2005 Astex signed a $520 million deal with Novartis AG for three cell-cycle inhibitors, the largest advertised figure for any deal involving a UK biotech to date, and bringing the total potential value of licenses granted by Astex in the past year to more than $1 billion.
The agreement leaves Astex with enough funding for the next two years.
By the end of 2006, Astex expects to have three compounds in the clinic, and the company has expressed an interest in going public.
Astex said after the deal that it set them up for an initial public offering.
In August 2005, Astex agreed a deal worth a potential $270 million with AstraZeneca for a range of small-molecule protein kinase B inhibitors that are in preclinical development, also for treating cancer.
Staff
 Harren Jhoti, PhD, Chief Scientific OfficerHarren Jhoti co-founded Astex in 1999 and is Chief Scientific Officer. He previously led the Structural Biology and Bioinformatics groups at GlaxoWellcome (1991-1999), applying protein structure analysis to drug discovery and was involved in structure-based drug design projects aimed at a variety of therapeutic targets. He received his PhD in Protein Crystallography from Birkbeck College, University of London. |  Robin Carr, PhD, VP Drug DiscoveryRobin Carr joined Astex as VP Drug Discovery in March 2001 from GlaxoWellcome, UK where he held senior roles including Deputy Chair of Respiratory Research, Chairman of New Target Evaluation Committee and Project Leadership of Lead Optimization projects. He has a long-standing interest in chemistry technologies and has managed GlaxoWellcome's high throughput chemistry, analytical and physical chemistry, natural product and biotransformation chemistry. He completed a PhD in organic chemistry and joined Glaxo from ICI as a medicinal chemist in 1989. He is the inventor on 12 patents covering compounds that have entered development and clinical trials. |
Contact details
Milton Road
Cambridge
CB4 0QA
UK
Tel: +44 (0)1223 226200
Fax: +44 (0)1223 226201
