Dr Gary Newton
Dr Gary Newton is a Team Leader at the Institute of Cancer Research. He is a member of the Centre for Cancer Drug Discovery where he applies his medicinal chemistry experience to validate new targets and develop effective medicines for the treatment of cancer. He has worked in biotech and contract research organisations over the course of 20 years, leading teams to discover a number of pre-clinical candidates. He is leading the medicinal chemistry team in the discovery of new compounds for ependymoma brain tumours.
Medicinal Chemistry Team
Jack O’Hanlon
Jack did his undergraduate studies in chemistry at the University of Oxford where he remained to study for his DPhil, also in chemistry, under the supervision of Jeremy Robertson and Luet Wong researching cytochrome P450 mutants. He then moved to Miraz Rahman’s group at King’s College London working as a postdoc on the synthesis of novel antibacterial agents. In 2018 Jack began working at the ICR, developing novel E3 ligase ligands before joining the CBTCE team where he is currently working on the application of targeted protein degradation for the treatment of children’s brain tumours.
Dr. Manasa Punaha Ravindra
Manasa joined the ICR as a postdoctoral training fellow for the Centre in Aug 2022. Prior to joining ICR, she worked with Prof Alison Hulme at the School of Chemistry, University of Edinburgh, developing imaging tags for bioorthognal Raman imaging. Her PhD project involved the development of tumour-targeted antifolates under the supervision of Prof Aleem Gangjee at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, USA.
Dr Lindsay Evans
Lindsay is a medicinal chemist with a background in both anticancer and antimicrobial drug discovery. She joined the Centre in November 2019 and has been working in collaboration with the University of Cambridge on the ependymoma drug discovery project. Prior to this she spent 4 years working in antimicrobial drug discovery at Imperial College London. She received her PhD while working with Prof. Keith Jones at the ICR.
Carla Fuentes-Guerra Bustos
I’m originally from Cordoba, in the south of Spain, but I traded sunshine for the rain to study in Scotland. I recently graduated with an MSci in Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Glasgow. For my final year project, I worked in Prof Andrew Jamieson’s group, focusing on developing covalent inhibitors of malarial kinase PfCLK3. During my degree, I also completed a year-long placement at GSK in Stevenage, where I joined the Modalities team and worked on synthesising PROTACs for cancer treatment. At the ICR, my PhD project focuses on transcription factor targeting in paediatric-type diffuse high-grade glioma (PDHGG), combining work in chemistry under the supervision of Dr Gary Newton and biology under Prof Chris Jones.
