Dr Gurdip Bhalay's team focuses on the design and synthesis of safe and effective drugs for the treatment of cancer.
Dr Gurdip Bhalay is a member of the Cancer Research UK Cancer Therapeutics Unit where he uses his experiences in medicinal chemistry and chemical biology to help discover new drugs and advance the science of drug discovery. He has worked at big pharma as well as contract research organisations gaining over 20 years’ experience.
Ms Imogen Andrews obtained an MChem from the University of York, during which she carried out a placement year in the Discovery High-Throughput Chemistry Department at GSK. Imogen is a 1st year PhD student, working collaboratively between Vlad Pena’s group in the Division of Structural Biology and the Cancer Therapeutics Unit to design anti-tumour drugs that target the spliceosome.
Dr Vassilios Bavetsias is a Senior Staff Scientist in the Cancer Research UK Cancer Therapeutics Unit at The Institute of Cancer Research, London. He works on the design and synthesis of small molecules as cancer therapeutics.
Dr Edward Briggs joined the ICR in January 2021 as a Postdoctoral Training Fellow. Ed obtained his MChem from the University of Southampton which included an undergraduate project with Professor Bruno Linclau on the fluorination of glucose and galactose derivatives and a placement at Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Following this, he then carried out his PhD with Dr James Bull at Imperial College London, developing novel synthetic methods to access sulfoximines and sulfonimidamides.
Dr Thomas Clough joined the ICR in January 2021 as a Postdoctoral Training Fellow. Tom studied chemistry at the University of Southampton, where he obtained an MChem following a research project on lanthanide chelators for medical imaging at the University of British Columbia. Following this, he completed a PhD in Professor Nick Long’s group at Imperial College London, working on the design, synthesis and testing of imaging probes targeted to the pancreas.
Dr Federica Gigante joined the ICR in September 2021 as a Higher Scientific Officer. Federica carried out her PhD in medicinal chemistry at the University of Dundee, in the group of Professor Ian Gilbert, her research focused on antiparasitic compounds. She then worked as a synthetic and medicinal chemist in a few companies (Evotec, Angelini, C4T, Eli Lilly) developing large libraries of compounds for several research projects. She then moved to Dotmatics, where she specialized in scientific software used in medicinal chemistry, before returning to research and joining the ICR, where she brings her experience to develop new anticancer compounds.
Dr Anna Maria Schoepf joined the ICR in December 2020 as a Postdoctoral Training Fellow. Anna studied pharmacy at the University of Innsbruck and subsequently worked as a licensed pharmacist and pharmacy manager in Austria and Argentina. This was followed by a PhD in the field of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Innsbruck, where she spent four years as a University Assistant at the Center for Chemistry and Biomedicine. Her doctoral studies (supervisor: Prof. Ronald Gust) focused on the development of small molecules to overcome the resistance in chronic myeloid leukemia and other malignancies.