Overview

Gender

male

Jonathan studied Biomedical Sciences at the University of Manchester where his research focused on the genetics of diabetes, exposing him to the richness of information in DNA that can be uncovered with computational tools. He was awarded a scholarship at the University of Exeter to study Bioinformatics, where he collaborated with GlaxoSmithKline to develop computational models determining the risk of recombinant protein breakdown by proteases in host cells. In 2003 Jonathan joined AstraZeneca as the first member of the newly formed Oncology Bioinformatics team. As a scientist and senior scientist he drove adoption of ‘omic data to establish molecular line of sight for new targets, specializing in gene expression microarrays. He introduced a number of pioneering approaches harnessing gene expression data from cancer cell lines to uncover the mechanisms of pathway/drug target dependency, discovering biomarkers of drug response. Throughout his career he has supported and influenced a number of programs, including drugs targeting PARP (Lynparza), mTOR, PI3K, AKT and ERBB. His work for the MEK inhibitor selumetinib led to a transcriptional readout of MEK activity that became the first transcriptomic hypothesis tested in AZ clinical trials. As a team leader and now Director Jonathan has gone on to build a global group focused on harnessing next generation sequencing and genomic data to further AstraZeneca’s oncology drug programs and precision medicine. His team are recognized as leaders in the field, with a number of high profile publications and algorithms now adopted by leading research centers around the world such as the VarDict NGS variant caller. Jonathan carries a strong collaborative attitude and is a champion of open innovation to harness the world’s data and expertise for actionable discovery.