People

This collaboration between Prof Sam Butterworth (The University of Manchester), Prof Mike Waring (Newcastle University) and Prof Andreas Brunschweiger (University of Würzburg) is funded by a Wellcome Trust Biomedical Resource grant, and aims to deliver validated hit compounds to several research groups by 2027.

Sam Butterworth

SB

Sam joined the university as a Senior Lecturer in Medicinal Chemistry in November 2016 and was promoted to Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in 2024. Prior to this he worked at the University of Birmingham from 2013 and at AstraZeneca from 2005-2013. During this time he has been accountable for chemistry strategy and delivery for all phases of discovery projects through externalised pre-portfolio collaborations, HTS, Lead Generation, Lead Optimisation to Pre-clinical development. His work at AstraZeneca led to the development of a targeted anti-cancer agent AZD9291, that was approved by the FDA in November 2015 and is now used internationally under the name osimertinib/Tagrisso. Along with his colleagues, Sam has been recognised for this work through the 2017 RSC Malcolm Campbell Award and the 2018 ACS Heroes of Chemistry award (see link above). 

The Butterworth group work on applying synthetic and biological chemistry to study and solve biological problems of relevance to human health and disease. All projects are conducted in collaboration with biomedical researchers and clinicians, allowing testing of compounds in the most relevant biological models. 

Mike Waring

MW

Mike's research interests are concerned with drug discovery using medicinal chemistry. He is Head of Medicinal Chemistry in the Cancer Research UK Newcastle Drug Discovery Group and Director of Academic Medicinal Chemistry for Cancer Research Horizons, CRUK's innovative organisation for therapeutic discovery. He is the Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Molecular Sciences for Medicine and Editor-in-Chief of RSC Medicinal Chemistry.

Mike teaches Pharmacokinetics and Drug Metabolism in the Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry (BSc and MChem) and Drug Chemistry (MSc) degree programmes.

Andreas Brunschweiger

AB

Andreas Brunschweiger studied Pharmacy at the University of Kiel (Germany), and obtained his PhD in the group of Prof. Christa Müller at the University of Bonn (Germany). Following postdoctoral research in the same group in collaboration with UCB Pharma, he joined Prof. Jonathan Hall's research group at the ETH Zurich (Switzerland), working on Chemical Biology tools to study microRNAs, and oligonucleotide-based microRNA inhibitors. His research interests as a group leader at TU Dortmund University (Germany) include computer-assisted tools for DNA-encoded library technology, DEL synthesis strategies, and assays for hit identification.