Dr. David Rees CBE FRS FMedSci
Chief Scientific Officer
Astex Therapeutics
Elected Fellow 2020
Small molecule drug discovery, medicinal chemistry, fragment based drug discovery, organic chemistry, cancer therapeutics.
David Rees, Chief Scientific Officer at Astex Pharmaceuticals, has an international scientific reputation for fragment-based drug discovery. His contributions have been central to Astex’s success, getting candidates into clinical trials and moving them to the market. Two launched drugs and a third, recently progressed into phase 3 trial, underline Astex’s industry-leading productivity.|Dr Rees was co-inventor of Erdafitinib, the first fibroblast growth factor receptor inhibitor approved for patients. Earlier in his career, he devised the innovative concept of using chemical chelation to reverse neuromuscular blockade in anaesthesia. This led to Sugammadex which has been used worldwide in hospitals in an estimated 35 million patients.