Astex Pharmaceuticals president wins scientific accolade

Astex Pharmaceuticals has welcomed news that its president and director Dr Harren Jhoti is to receive a prestigious scientific accolade from the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry.

Dr Jhoti will be given the 2012 Prous Institute-Overton and Meyer Award for New Technologies in Drug Discovery, which is presented every two years in recognition of technology innovations in the field of drug research.

He is a widely respected figure in the life science industry and helped to co-found Astex back in 2001, winning the title of chemistry world entrepreneur of the year in 2007 courtesy of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

The pioneering scientist will claim his accolade at the September 2012 meeting of the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry in Berlin.

Dr Jhoti said: "This award recognises the leading position that the Astex team has established in fragment-based drug discovery, a technique now widely used by the pharmaceutical sector to discover high-quality drug candidates."

Last month, the company announced that it had received a recommendation for European approval of Dacogen, a new treatment for acute myeloid leukaemia that will be marketed by Janssen.