Biography
Dr Gary Newton joined the ICR in January 2020 as leader of Medicinal Chemistry Team 3 (previously overseen by Professor Rajesh Chopra). His team is involved in collaborative research with internal and external partners with the aim of discovering new cancer therapeutics.
His team has a keen interest in designing molecules to help understand the target biology as well as developing molecules suitable for clinical evaluation. Collaboration with structural biology plays an important role in the design of potent, selective molecules and helps to guide the tuning of physio-chemical properties required to develop a drug molecule.
As well as targeting traditional, reversible, orthosteric binders, Dr Newton's team are keen to investigate covalent and allosteric approaches as well as protein degraders in order to provide the most appropriate molecules to the probe the biology and help overcome resistant phenotypes.
Dr Newton studied chemistry at the University of Sheffield before completing his PhD on the asymmetric synthesis of tropane alkaloids with Professor Varinder Aggarwal.
Following his PhD, he joined OSI Pharmaceuticals in their oncology division, where he worked on a number targets including integrins and kinases, helping to generate molecules suitable for proof of concept and progression to the clinic.
In 2004, Dr Newton joined NCE Discovery, later Domainex, where he spent the next fifteen years helping to build up the medicinal chemistry group as well as leading multi-disciplinary teams across a number of therapeutic areas.
During his time at Domainex he worked in close collaboration with a number of academic and industrial partners, generating first-in-class pre-clinical candidate molecules against targets in asthma, inflammatory and cardiovascular disease.