Scientific Founders & Advisors

Professor Tony Kouzarides, PhD, FMedSci, FRS

Director & Founder

Professor Eric Miska, PhD

Founder

Professor Paul Workman, FRS, FMedSci

Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board

Professor Thomas Carell, PhD

Professor Thomas Cech, PhD

Professor Mark Dawson

Paul Leeson, PhD

Professor Tony Kouzarides, PhD, FMedSci, FRS

Director & Founder

Tony is Professor of Cancer Biology at the University of Cambridge and a group leader at the Gurdon Institute. He currently holds the following directorships: director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute, director of Cambridge Gravity and director of STORM Therapeutics.

Tony did his PhD at the University of Cambridge and postdoctoral work at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and New York University Medical Center. His research group at the Gurdon Institute is focused on epigenetic modifications and their involvement in cancer.

Tony is director and co-founder of the Milner Therapeutics Institute, which connects academia and industry, founder/director of Cambridge Gravity, an organization that supports early-career entrepreneurs, and founder/patron of “Vencer el Cancer,” a cancer charity in Spain. He is on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institute of Cancer Research (UK) and Foghorn Therapeutics (USA).

Tony is a co-founder and ex-director of Abcam plc, a publicly trading research reagents company in Cambridge, a co-founder and ex-director of Chroma Therapeutics, of a drug discovery company based in Oxford and a co-founder and current director of STORM Therapeutics, a drug discovery company based in Cambridge.

Tony has been elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, Fellow of the British Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci), Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), a fellow of the Cyprus Academy of Science, and is a Cancer Research UK Gibbs Fellow. He has been awarded the Wellcome Trust medal for research in biochemistry related to medicine (UK), the Tenovus Medal (UK), the Bodossaki Foundation prize in Biology (Greece), the Bijvoet Medal (Holland), the Biochemical Society Award (uk) , the Novartis Medal and Prize (UK), the Heinrich Wieland Prize (Germany), the Nemitsas Prize (Cyprus) and the Science Excellence award (Cyprus).

Professor Eric Miska, PhD

Founder

Eric is the Herchel Smith Professor of Molecular Genetics and a Senior Group Leader at the Gurdon Institute at the University of Cambridge. He has an appointment as associated faculty at the Cambridge Systems Biology Centre and the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Research Institute. Eric was an EMBO Young Investigator and is a full member of EMBO since 2012. Eric is the 2013 recipient of the Hooke Medal awarded by the British Society of Cell Biology. He joined the faculty of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton in 2014 and is a Senior Investigator of the Wellcome Trust.

Eric studied mathematics, physics and biology at Heidelberg, Berlin and Mainz and holds a BA in Biochemistry from Trinity College, Dublin. He received his PhD in Pathology from the University of Cambridge, UK, in 2000, working with Professor Tony Kouzarides, and was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Nobel laureate Bob Horvitz at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA from 2000 to 2004. He started his own research group at the Gurdon Institute in 2005.

Research

Eric’s research team at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge is interested in all aspects of gene regulation by non-coding RNA. Current research themes include: miRNA biology and pathology, miRNA mechanism, piRNA biology and the germline, endo-siRNAs in epigenetic inheritance and evironmental conditioning, small RNA evolution and the role of RNAi in host pathogen interaction.

Professor Paul Workman, FRS, FMedSci

Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board

Paul Workman is the Harrap Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), London. Until August 2021, he served for seven years as Chief Executive and President of ICR, and for almost twenty years he was Director of ICR’s Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Cancer Therapeutics Unit – one of the world’s leading academic drug discovery organizations. In addition, Paul served as Founding Director of the CRUK Convergence Science Centre at ICR and Imperial College, and he is Co-Director of the CRUK Children’s Brain Tumour Centre of Excellence at ICR and Cambridge University. Paul is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society (the UK’s national academy of science), Academy of Medical Sciences, Royal Society of Chemistry, Royal Society of Biology, Royal Society of Medicine, and European Academy of Cancer Sciences, and he was awarded a CRUK Life Fellowship.

Paul Workman is renowned for his research on the molecular pharmacology of targeted cancer drugs and he has been instrumental in the discovery of multiple clinical candidates and chemical probes, including those acting on protein kinases, PI3 kinases, the molecular chaperone HSP90 and the Heat Shock Factor 1 pathway. He is also the originator of the widely used Pharmacological Audit Trail for biomarker-led drug discovery and development. In addition, Paul has played a leading role in the provision of public resources for biomedical research and drug discovery, specifically the Chemical Probes Portal (of which he is Executive Director, Probe Miner and canSAR.

Before joining ICR, Paul Workman spent four years in the cancer drug discovery leadership team at AstraZeneca, and prior to that worked at Glasgow and Cambridge Universities, with a sabbatical visit as a UICC Fellow to Stanford University and SRI International. Paul obtained his B.Sc. in Biological Sciences from the University of Leicester, UK, and his Ph.D. in Cancer Pharmacology from the University of Leeds, UK.

Paul is a serial scientific entrepreneur. He was a scientific founder of Piramed Pharma (acquired by Roche) and Chroma Therapeutics, is a Science Partner at Nextech Invest, has collaborated extensively with biotech and pharma companies, and serves as an adviser to several biotechs. As well as serving as a Non-Executive Director at STORM Therapeutics, Paul also chairs STORM’s Scientific Advisory Board.

Paul Workman has received numerous honours and awards, including the Royal Society of Chemistry George and Christine Sosnovsky Award for Cancer Therapy, Royal Society of Chemistry World Entrepreneur Award, CRUK Translational Cancer Research Prize, and the International Raymond Bourgine Award for Excellence in Cancer Research. In addition, Paul led the team that won the 2012 American Association of Cancer Research Team Science Award, and under his leadership the ICR was awarded a 2017 Queens’ Anniversary Prize for its world-leading research in cancer drug discovery leading to global patient impact. Paul lectures, writes and blogs about cancer research and drug discovery.

Professor Thomas Carell, PhD

Thomas Carell (Ph. D) was raised in Bad-Salzuflen (Germany). He studied chemistry at the Universities of Münster and Heidelberg. In 1993 he obtained his doctorate with Prof. H. A. Staab at the Max Planck Institute of Medical Research in Heidelberg. After postdoctoral training with Prof. J. Rebek at MIT (Cambridge, USA) in 1993-1995, Thomas Carell moved to the ETH Zürich (Switzerland) as an assistant professor to start independent research. He obtained his habilitation (tenure) in 2000. He subsequently accepted a full professor position for Organic Chemistry at the Philipps-Universität in Marburg (Germany). In 2004 Thomas Carell moved to the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich (Germany), where he is heading a research group centered around chemical biology. The current focus is to analyze the chemistry of epigenetics and prebiotic chemistry. Thomas Carell is a founder of the company Baseclick GmbH. He is a member of the National German Academy, Leopoldina and of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Arts and Sciences. Thomas Carell received the Cross of Merit from the Federal Republic of Germany (knighted). Thomas Carell obtained the Leibniz award and an ERC advanced grant. He is the speaker of the Excellence Cluster (EXC114) on protein chemistry and of the collaborative research center (SFB13ß9) on Chemical Epigenetics.

Professor Thomas Cech, PhD

Distinguished Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry, University of Colorado Boulder

Director, University of Colorado BioFrontiers Institute

Dr. Cech obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and then engaged in postdoctoral research in the department of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1978 he joined the faculty of the University of Colorado Boulder, where he became Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry in 1990 and is currently Director of the BioFrontiers Institute.

In 1982 Dr. Cech and his research group announced that an RNA molecule from Tetrahymena, a single-celled pond organism, cut and rejoined chemical bonds in the complete absence of proteins. This discovery of self-splicing RNA provided the first exception to the long-held belief that biological reactions are always catalyzed by proteins. In addition, it has been heralded as providing a new, plausible scenario for the origin of life; because RNA can be both an information-carrying molecule and a catalyst, perhaps the first self-reproducing system consisted of RNA alone.

Dr. Cech's work has been recognized by many national and international awards and prizes, including the Heineken Prize of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (1988), the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award (1988), the Nobel Prize i+n Chemistry (1989), and the National Medal of Science (1995). In 1987 Dr. Cech was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and also awarded a lifetime professorship by the American Cancer Society. He was the scientific founder of Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (1992-99) and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Merck & Co., Inc., New Jersey, USA.

Professor Mark Dawson

Professor Dawson is a clinician-scientist in the Sir Peter MacCallum Department of Oncology and Centre of Cancer Research at the University of Melbourne. He is the program head of the Translational Haematology Program, Group leader of the Cancer Epigenetics Laboratory and Consultant Haematologist in the Department of Haematology. His research interest is studying epigenetic regulation in normal and malignant haematopoiesis. He is a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia. After completing his clinical training in Melbourne, Australia he was awarded the prestigious General Sir John Monash Fellowship and Cambridge Commonwealth Trust Fellowship, which he used to complete his PhD at the University of Cambridge. Following his PhD, he was awarded the inaugural Wellcome Trust Beit Prize Fellowship to pursue his research into epigenetic regulation of leukaemia stem cells. This research identified a new therapeutic strategy for acute myeloid leukaemia by targeting the BET bromodomain proteins that function as epigenetic readers. This work helped set the platform for clinical trials with this first in class epigenetic therapy. His research has been published in world leading journals including Nature, Cell, Science and New England Journal of Medicine. He is currently the Senior Research Fellow for the Leukaemia Foundation of Australia and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Research Scholar.

Paul Leeson, PhD

Paul Leeson is a medicinal chemist with more than 35 years’ experience of drug discovery and development in senior roles in several major pharmaceutical companies. While at Smith Kline and French, Merck Sharp and Dohme, Wyeth (USA), AstraZeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline, Paul contributed to numerous projects in the cardiovascular, neuroscience, respiratory and inflammation therapy areas. His drug discovery contributions are documented in more than 160 publications and patents. Paul has given over 60 invited presentations at national and international conferences. At AstraZeneca (1997-2011), Paul was head of medicinal chemistry at the Charnwood site, where his Department invented more than 40 candidate drugs, with one marketed. From 2002-2009 he led AstraZeneca’s Global Chemistry Forum, which managed global activities in discovery and early process chemistry, and implemented improved practices in hit-to-lead, lead optimisation, prediction, synthesis and outsourced chemistry.

Since 2014 Paul has advised medium and large pharmaceutical companies, start-ups, and academia. He has a special interest in compound quality, which was recognised in 2014 by the receipt of the Nauta Award from the European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC). Paul has a PhD from the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and a member of the American Chemical Society (ACS). Since 2015 he is Honorary Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the School of Pharmacy, University of Nottingham.