New Editorial Board Members for MedChemComm

10 Mar 2015

MedChemComm has new Editorial Board members.

Earlier this year we told you about some of the retirements from our Editorial Board, now we are pleased to introduce some new faces. We are delighted to welcome:

Professor Koen Augustyns (University of Antwerp, Belgium)
Dr Christopher Burns (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Australia)
Professor Andrea Cavalli (University of Bologna, Italy)
Dr Mike Hann (GlaxoSmithKline, UK)
Dr Yoshinori Ikeura (Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd, Japan)

We will introduce them all individually in a series of blogs, starting with this one.

Dr Christopher Burns

Dr Christopher Burns obtained his PhD in Organic Chemistry at the University of Melbourne in 1990. Following postdoctoral work at Pennsylvania State University with Prof Ken Feldman, he joined Pfizer (UK) as a medicinal chemist. After 5 years Chris returned to Australia where he worked in the field of biosensors for use in drug discovery, first as a Research Fellow at The University of Sydney, and then with biotech company Ambri.

In 2001 Chris joined Melbourne biotechnology company Cytopia to establish and lead the medicinal chemistry team and in 2006 he became Research Director. Over this time Chris led the discovery of two compounds that entered clinical trial: the orally active vascular disrupting agent lexibulin and the dual JAK1/2 inhibitor momelotinib. The latter compound, now being developed by Gilead Sciences, is currently undergoing multiple Phase II and III trials.

In 2010 Burns joined the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research and has embarked on a number of medicinal chemistry and chemical biology projects currently underway. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute and an Honorary Research Associate, School of Chemistry, BIO21, University of Melbourne where he lectures on anticancer drug discovery.

Chris recently contributed to our Epigenetics themed issue with his work on: