Hamish Ryder – Director of Drug Discovery
Tony Raynham – Head of Medicinal Chemistry
Tim Hammonds – Head of Molecular Pharmacology
Juliet Williams – Head of Functional Pharmacology
Hamish Ryder, PhD
Director of Drug Discovery
Hamish obtained his first degree in natural sciences and a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Cambridge. He then spent 10 years working in the pharma/biotech industry in the UK, in positions of increasing responsibility at Ferring and Xenova, where he was Head of Medicinal Chemistry. He moved to Spain in 1996 as Director of Drug Discovery at Laboratories Almirall, Spain's largest pharmaceutical company. In January 2008 he returned to the UK, joining CRT as Director of Drug Discovery. Hamish has worked in a number of therapeutic areas, including autoimmunity and inflammation, respiratory, GI, CNS and cancer. He has lead teams and overseen organisations that have worked with various target classes, including proteases, GPCRs, phophodiesterases, integrins, and kinases. These efforts produced over 25 candidate drugs for regulatory development, more than 15 of which have advanced to clinical trials.
Tony Raynham, PhD, C.Chem, FRSC
Head of Medicinal Chemistry
Tony obtained a BSc (Hons) degree in chemistry from Imperial College of Science and Technology, London and a PhD in natural product synthesis from Northwestern University, Illinois, USA. He then worked on developing novel asymmetric synthesis methodologies as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Geneva before moving to Roche Discovery Welwyn as a medicinal chemist working on drug discovery programs aimed at inhibiting key proteases in cardiovascular and anti-viral therapeutic areas. After a brief spell as a Head of Chemistry at Cambridge Discovery Chemistry, Tony was appointed Associate Director of Oncology Discovery Chemistry at Millennium Pharmaceuticals. During this time, he managed drug discovery programs focussed on the inhibition of novel cell-cycle kinases and novel enzymes within the Ubiquitin-26S Proteasome pathway and developed MLN8054, an inhibitor of Aurora Kinase, currently in Phase 1 clinical trials. Towards the end of 2003 Tony was awarded a Fellowship from the Royal Society of Chemistry and at the beginning of 2004 he moved to CRT to head the Medicinal Chemistry department.
Tim Hammonds, BPharm, PhD
Head of Molecular Pharmacology
Tim has a degree in Pharmacy and a PhD in pharmaceutical chemistry and microbiology from the University of Nottingham studying the antiviral mechanism for tubulin binding drugs. Following his PhD Tim worked for one year studying the biophysics of DNA-protein interactions at the University of Toronto before returning to the UK to study the enzymology and inhibition of the ATPase of topoisomerase II enzymes at Leicester University. During his PhD and postdoctoral studies Tim was engaged in the transfer of many assay formats, both enzyme and cell-based, to microtitre plates to increase throughput and accuracy. Tim joined CRT in 1999 to set up the development and execution of assays for HTS, he has worked on all of CRT's small molecule discovery projects to date and managed several key projects in early and late stage development. In 2006 Tim was promoted to Head of Molecular Pharmacology at CRT. He continues to oversee operations and contributes to the strategic aspects of the CRT discovery portfolio.
Juliet Williams, B.A, PhD
Head of Functional Pharmacology
Juliet obtained her B.A (Hons) degree in Natural Sciences from St. John's College, Cambridge University and a PhD in Developmental Biology from University College London. She then worked on discovering Hedgehog pathway inhibitors at Curis Inc. in Cambridge Massachussets, work which has led to Phase II trails of Smoothened inhibitors in collaboration with Genentech. She then moved on to Millennium Pharmaceuticals, leading projects in discovery including MLN518, a Type III RTK inhibitor currently in clinical trials for AML, before being hired by Novartis to work on developmental pathway inhibitors for oncology therapeutics, which has also led to IND filings. Most recently Juliet has been a consultant for the oncology discovery department at Sanofi-Aventis, joining CRT in March 2009.
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