Solid silver Astex set to celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2024
Astex CEO, Harren Jhoti
Drug discovery and development doyen Astex Pharmaceuticals is widely acknowledged as a world-class success having had a role in two blockbuster drugs with a third around the corner.
But it’s a matter of pride to the company that this global glory has been achieved from the same Cambridge ‘home’ since CEO and president Harren Jhoti and colleagues founded the business in 1999.
In 2024, when Astex celebrates its 25th anniversary, no-one in the company will forget where the family silver resides – in its carefully crafted Cambridge Science Park mother ship.
Astex now has two buildings at the Park, housing its multidisciplinary team of medicinal chemists, computational chemists, molecular scientists, bioinformaticians, bioscientists and DMPK scientists.
What is certain is that Astex will continue to nurture a spirit of ‘family’ within the wider company regardless of where its people ply their skills.
The company this year is celebrating 10 years under the ownership of Japanese pharma Otsuka and staff across the facilities intermingled seamlessly during the celebrations.
The model is so successful that Otsuka is happy to send Japan-based employees to Astex for secondments. In return, Astex has sent UK staff for secondments to Japan to learn from the Japanese parent.
Astex has managed to grow worldwide despite staying fairly small in terms of footprint. But it hasn’t stinted on recruiting the best people among its ~150 or so staff – wherever in the world they hail from – or significant investment in state-of-the-art instrumentation.
One of its most significant investments in recent times has been a big-money outlay for industry leading cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) microscopes.
Integrating cryo-EM technology into the Astex drug discovery platform will help structurally interrogate biological targets that were previously not
suitable for fragment-based drug design (FBDD)/structure-based drug design (SBDD).
Recent technological breakthroughs have made cryo-EM the method of choice for the structural determination of large protein complexes, GPCRs, ion channels and antibody complexes.
cryo-EM has improved tremendously as the technology allows users to visualise molecules across a range of sizes and helps them obtain time-critical insights for their drug discovery project.
Astex has a number of collaborations with leading academic institutions
and consortiums to support its Open Innovation strategy, including the University of Cambridge, Newcastle University, Cancer Research Horizons, and The Milner Therapeutic Institute Consortium to name a few.
The company has welcomed the increasing number of Park-wide opportunities for companies to mingle, which it believes has added to a sense of community at the location.
And it anticipates sowing more seeds of discovery from this highly fertile territory going forward. One of the Science Park’s longest-reigning tenants, Astex is the power behind a blockbuster drug identified by phase III trials as a life saver for thousands of women with the most common form of breast cancer.
Kisqali® (ribociclib) was launched by Novartis following US marketing approval by FDA in March 2017 and by EMA in August 2017 as a first line drug treatment for postmenopausal women with HR+/HER 2 advanced breast cancer in combination with an aromatase inhibitor.
Novartis reveals that the trials showed the drug not only saved lives but also slashed the risk of recurrence by 25 per cent across a broad population of patients with early breast cancer. The drug is now approved for use in more than 75 countries.
Astex was also involved in seminal research almost 20 years ago with the Institute of Cancer Research on the discovery of compounds against a cancer target known as AKT.
Inhibitors of AKT were discovered jointly by Astex in collaboration with ICR and CRT, then licensed to AstraZeneca for further research and development.
Approval for Capivasertib could now come within a year, perhaps even six months, according to seasoned observers who say it is a bolt-on blockbuster – a pharmaceutical product that generates more than a billion dollars of revenue for its owner each year.
As previously reported, Astex has already had two cancer drugs reach marketing approval based on discoveries made using its pioneering Pyramid™ fragment-based drug discovery platform underlining its productivity in translating research into new medicines. The first was Kisqali® and the second Janssen’s BALVERSA™.
Harren Jhoti says: “It is immensely satisfying to see research we helped conduct some 20 years ago bearing fruit now. We collaborate with a number of Big Pharma players, the most recent being MSD (Merck in the US) in an agreement signed two years ago. We have earned significant royalties and associated revenues for our discoveries for Big Pharma over the years.
“This is due in no small measure to the quality of our team in Cambridge; we place such a strong focus and value on recruiting and retaining the very highest quality of people.
“And I have to say Otsuka has been a wonderful parent company. A lot of acquirers make promises that they probably mean with the best of intentions but find it hard to live up to as time passes.
“Otsuka has been wonderfully supportive but at the same time has allowed us to work in our own way. Astex is proud of its long heritage, from foundation by myself, Chris Abell and Sir Tom Blundell.
“To this day we retain a laser focus on the discovery and development of drugs in oncology and diseases of the central nervous system.”