King’s New Year Honours 2023: Drug discovery pioneer Dr Harren Jhoti, co-founder of Astex Pharmaceuticals, made an OBE
Dr Harren Jhoti, CEO and co-founder of Cambridge Science Park-based Astex Pharmaceuticals, has been made an OBE after pioneering an approach that changed drug discovery.
He has been honoured in the King’s New Year Honours 2023 for services to cancer research and drug discovery.
Dr Jhoti co-founded the company in 1999 to pioneer the development of an approach known as fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD), which has now become well established across the pharmaceutical industry.
It was used by Astex to help discover two medicines, Kisqali and Balversal, which are now in use and helping cancer patients.
Dr Jhoti said: “It is a great privilege to receive this honour. This award recognises the contribution that I have made in some small way to the development of Astex, but I share it with all of my colleagues, past and present, and with our collaborators who have helped contribute to the success of our company.
“As scientists, we hope that our discoveries will make a difference to patients, and as entrepreneurs we strive to build sustainable companies to translate those discoveries into significant new medicines.
“At Astex we, as a team, are fortunate to have achieved both goals. The company has also greatly benefited from the growth and development of the UK life sciences sector in the last 20 years into a leading international powerhouse.”
And he told the Cambridge Independent that he could scarcely have dreamed of the success of the company when it was formed.
“I would have struggled to imagine that we would still be going 20-plus years on and be fortunate enough - really down to the hard work of the team - to be associated with two approved drugs for cancer patients.
“In those days, we were just thinking about the next six months or year, and how we’d keep the team together and get access to funding to build this technology.”
Fragment-based drug discovery has transformed the process of small molecule drug discovery. It involves screening compounds much smaller in size than previously used in order to increase the chances of an initial interaction. These fragments act as seeds for growing a proper drug-size molecule, with biophysical techniques, such as X-ray crystallography, used to identify the binding of a fragment to the target protein.
An advocate of the UK life sciences sector, and the Cambridge life sciences ecosystem in particular, Dr Jhoti co-founded Astex in 1999 and was chief scientific officer until November 2007 when he was appointed CEO.
In October 2013, Astex was acquired by Japanese-based Otsuka Pharmaceuticals in a deal worth $886million and developed a second therapy area, focused on diseases of the central nervous system.
The company continues to work on cancer drugs and is working with sister company Taiho Pharmaceutical in a agreement with MSD to investiate the KRAS oncogene, which is being investigated for the treatment of cancer.
Astex is using technology including a cryo-EM facility to aid its drug development.
Its latest success came when AstraZeneca announced the success of a phase III clinical trial of a drug called capivasertib, which Astex helped to discover with the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), before it was licensed out. The trial showed capivasertib, in combination with hormone therapy, could become the new treatment for patients with advanced forms of the most common type of breast cancer.
Prof Sir Tom Blundell, a fellow Astex co-founder and board member, said: ‘‘This honour is very well deserved. It underlines Harren’s qualities as an innovator, entrepreneur and leader at Astex. Harren has been the main driver of Astex’s success in developing new medicines using structure-guided fragment-based methods for oncology and diseases of the central nervous system.
“He has proved to be a visionary, not only in the science, but also in managing the team at Astex in a non-hierarchical structure, encouraging innovation by individuals in a multidisciplinary approach to early discovery.
“He has also successfully developed collaborations with large pharma companies in Europe and USA and the Japanese company Otsuka to ensure success in clinical trials.”
Dr Jhoti was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 2018, a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2016 and a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2015.
In January 2018, he was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the UK BioIndustry Association (BIA) and the following year he was made a fellow of Birkbeck College, London, his alma mater.
He earned the Prous Institute-Overton and Meyer Award for New Technologies in Drug Discovery from the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry in 2012 and was also named by the Royal Society of Chemistry as ‘Chemistry World Entrepreneur of the Year’ in 2007.
He has published papers in Nature and Science, and was featured in Time magazine after Astex was named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum in 2005.
He has served on the board of the BIA, the UK BioIndustry Association and consults for life science venture capital firms.
Prior to founding Astex, he was head of structural biology and bioinformatics at GlaxoWellcome in the UK from 1991-99.
A British Asian, he was state educated in Swindon and went on to study at the University of London, receiving a BSc (hons) in biochemistry in 1985 and a PhD in protein crystallography in 1989, before taking a role as a post-doctoral scientist at Oxford University.
