James Osborne
Director of Medicinal Chemistry
James is a drug discovery leader, with significant experience in delivering development and clinical candidates for both Oncology and CNS disorders.
In James’s most recent position he led the Discovery function, at GW Pharmaceuticals, where he was responsible for the delivery of several novel development candidates in the CNS space.
James started his drug discovery career at the Institute of Cancer Research and was a key contributor to the delivery of the CHK1 clinical candidate SRA737. Since then he has successfully taken project and medicinal chemistry leadership roles at Astex Pharmaceuticals and Charles River Labs, where he worked across several different target classes and therapeutic areas. In these leadership roles, James has been involved in the delivery of a number of key milestones, from hit identification to candidate nomination (7 development candidates and 1 additional clinical candidate, ASTX295), using a range of technology platforms, including, AI/in-silico driven discovery, Fragment-based Drug Design, Structure-based Drug Design, and phenotypic drug discovery.
James holds an MSci in Chemistry and a Ph.D. in organic synthesis, from Nottingham University and completed his postdoctoral studies at the University of Oxford.
