Drug development with Paul Workman
1 Oct 2012 by Evoluted New Media
We chat to Professor Paul Workman fromThe Institute of Cancer Research - winner of a global award recognising his success at taking pioneering drugs out of the laboratory and into commerical development
The Royal Society of Chemistry chose Professor Paul Workman as the recipient of its 2012 Chemistry World Entrepreneur of the Year Award and will officially present the honour at a ceremony in November. Professor Workman has several roles at the ICR, including overseeing all of the organisation’s drug research as Director of the Cancer Research UK Cancer Therapeutics Unit and Head of the broader Division of Therapeutics. He also has his own personal molecular pharmacology lab, and since 2011 has played a strategic role guiding the present and future direction of the ICR as its Deputy Chief Executive.
How does it feel to be named RSC Chemistry World Entrepreneur of the Year?
It’s a real honour and privilege to receive this very special award from the RSC. In 2010, the RSC gave me their George and Christine Sosnovsky Award in Cancer Therapy, highlighting one promising area of our scientific research – the role of chaperone proteins in cancer cells – and how we used this knowledge to discover new drugs that inhibit Heat Shock Protein 90. The new RSC award recognises the more entrepreneurial aspects of our work, in translating our drug discovery research into the commercial world. Both the laboratory discovery and commercial development are critical if cancer patients are to benefit – which is the most important thing for us – and so I am thrilled that both aspects of what we do have been recognised by the RSC.
Tell us more about the work that led to you being awarded this honour:
Specifically the award citation said: “For his work as a scientific pioneer and serial entrepreneur whose numerous commercialised discoveries and academic research led to his founding two successful chemical companies: Piramed Pharma and Chroma Therapeutics.” The scientific pioneer part involves our exploitation of the molecular and genetic understanding of cancer to discover new drugs that target the weaknesses in cancer cells. The serial entrepreneur part involves creating or collaborating with companies that help us to get our drugs into the clinic and then out to cancer patients worldwide. The two biotech companies mentioned, Piramed and Chroma, were start-ups that I co-founded to accelerate our work on PI3 kinase inhibitors and chromatin-modifying enzymes, respectively. We have also made many other collaborative research and licensing deals with biotechs and big pharma to accelerate patient benefit from our discoveries. Patients are the main motivation – but the multi-dimensional aspects also make my job incredibly varied and interesting.
What led to you working in this area?
I have been involved in research into cancer drugs – discovering new ones in the lab and developing them in the clinic, as well working to understand their molecular mechanism of action – for the whole of my career. I have been motivated by two important factors: firstly a fascination with the underlying biological mechanisms of disease, especially cancer, and secondly a passion to develop innovative drugs that target these mechanisms and which really have an impact on the lives on cancer patients.
How will this award help your work?
The award will help motivate us to work even harder at discovering further innovative new cancer drugs and understanding how to use them effectively for personalised therapy in the clinic.
Your team has discovered 16 new drug candidates in six years – what next for this line of research?
The past few years have been particularly productive for us, not only discovering the 16 candidates, but also progressing six of our drugs into trials in our partner hospital The Royal Marsden, and seeing our prostate cancer drug abiraterone licensed for patient use. In April this year we received the American Association of Cancer Research’s prestigious Team Science Award specifically in recognition of that track record. It’s important to stress that success in drug discovery and development is absolutely a team science. We could not have achieved what we have without the input of all the chemists, biologists and other specialists in-house and in other academic groups, along with the companies that we have formed and worked closely with. Putting all of that together has been enormously exciting and satisfying for me. The next step for us is to discover yet more drugs targeting the vulnerabilities of cancer cells. Another major focus will be understanding how cancer cells can become resistant to drugs, and developing personalised drug combinations that overcome this problem so as to extend survival even further and to increase cure rates for cancer patients.
