A Structured Approach to Academic Drug Discovery

About the Speaker
Simon Ward has an MA in Natural Sciences and PhD in synthetic organic chemistry from Cambridge University. He has a wide ranging experience of drug discovery in both large and small companies (GlaxoSmithKline, Knoll Pharmaceuticals, Vernalis, Chiroscience) and specialist experience of discovering and developing drugs for central nervous system indications. He has led multidisciplinary project teams & medicinal chemistry groups from target identification, through to early clinical studies, delivering multiple clinical development candidates across indications. Simon is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Simon is currently Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Sussex, UK and Director of the Translational Drug Discovery Group which he established within the University of Sussex in 2010.Abstract
The Translational Drug Discovery Group was established in 2011 at the University of Sussex to deliver both drug candidates into clinical development and novel chemical probes to enable validation of new therapeutic targets.  Our philosophy is to combine expertise in clinical and biological disease understanding with our pharma track record in drug discovery and development.  This presentation will exemplify our strategy and research in the areas of DNA damage repair pathways for oncology and ion channel modulators for neuroscience indications.  The approach will highlight both our use of structure-based drug design in both lead optimisation and identification and also our approach to hit finding for novel, challenging protein classes.