Throughout my 15 year industrial career I have worked on a wide variety of medicinal chemistry and drug development projects across a spectrum of industry. My experience includes discovery of leads and development of them into clinical candidates using organic synthesis, analytical chemistry, structure-based design (use of X-ray structures and computational chemistry to progress lead candidates), analysis of multi-disciplinary structure activity relationships (SAR), progression of compounds through hit to lead and lead optimization, pre-clinical development, CMC management for GMP API material for clinical trials, CMC regulatory and quality for API. Intellectual property – extensive experience of patent drafting for composition of matter, use and solid form patents.

 

In NUS I plan to bring industry 'best practices' to Academic Drug Discovery through the NUS Drug Development Unit (DDU:http://ddu.nus.edu.sg/) and through specific collaborations with like-minded colleagues.

 

Specific areas of experience include:

 

1. Medicinal Chemistry of enzyme inhibitors and modulators of receptors and ion channels.

2. Fragment Screening for Lead Identification for start-points for medicinal chemistry.

3. Structure-based design for progression of medicinal chemistry lead series.

4. Synthetic route development towards biologically active compounds.

 

Prior Research Experience

 

• Kinase Inhibitors for cancer and autoimmune disease, particularly inhibitors of JAK2, FLT3, CDKs, PI3Ks, mTOR, PDK1, HDAC and HMTs.

• Chaperone Inhibitors, particularly, Hsp90.

• Protease inhibitors, particularly, anti virals for Hepatitis C (NS3 protease) and HIV (Reverse Transcriptase).

• Anti-bacterials and application of medicinal chemistry to CNS diseases.

 

Specific Therapeutic contributions, as member of a Multidisciplinary Team:

 

• NVP-AUY922, Hsp90 inhibitor, licensed to Novartis and now in Phase 2 clinical trials for cancer

• BEP800, Hsp90 inhibitor discovered through Fragment Screening, licensed to Novartis.

• Pacritinib (SB1518) - JAK2/FLT3 kinase inhibitor for cancer, licensed to Cell Therapeutics, now in Phase 3

• SB1578 - JAK2/FLT3 kinase inhibitor for autoimmune diseases (e.g. Rheumatoid Arthritis), licensed to Cell Therapeutics

• SB1317 - CDK/JAK/FLT3 inhibitor for serious cancers (e.g. acute leukemia), licensed to Tragara Pharmaceuticals, in Phase 1

• Pracinostat (SB939) - a pan-HDAC inhibitor for cancer, licensed to MEI Pharma, in Phase 2 

• SB2343 - selective mTOR/pan-PI3K inhibitor for cancer, licensed to Verastem

• SB2602 - a selective mTOR inhibitor for cancer and non-oncology indications.