John Booth
CAREER SUMMARY
Dr. Booth has fourteen years of pharmaceutical research experience with increasing levels of scientific and leadership responsibilities across a range of medicinal chemistry, synthetic chemistry and combinatorial chemistry research areas. John started his career in the USA at Parke-Davis in the combinatorial chemistry group which rapidly led to a key publication in JACS on the use of polymer supported reagents for the purification of compounds. John became a project leader in the Pfizer Oncology Therapeutic Area with a focus upon kinase inhibitors, their therapeutic use and challenges. John was recruited by Deciphera Pharmaceuticals where he continued innovative kinase research as both a project leader and Principle Investigator. John has been responsible for the establishment of project teams and the management of international collaborations. Specific areas of research include Wee1 kinase (Oncology), CDK4 (Oncology), NMDA (pain), matrix metalloproteinase (arthritis) and a number of other targets for inflammatory diseases. John is an author or co-author on 17 publications and a co-inventor on issued US patents. John received his post-doctoral training under Professor Magnus at the University of Texas at Austin working on approaches to the total synthesis of Taxol.
KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Inflammation Medicinal Chemistry:
- Effectively co-led multidisciplinary project teams of 2-10 chemists, biology, safety, PDM.
- Established & implemented medicinal chemistry strategy
- New Targets team: project evaluation, selection and prioritization.
Cross-site Kinase Medicinal Chemistry Working Group:
- Established strategies to expand approaches to Kinase inhibitor discovery.
- Designed proprietary chemical libraries for syntheisis by external contractors
Oncology Medicinal Chemistry:
- Project leadership of international collaborations.
- Designed and synthesized selective Wee1 kinase and CDK4 kinase inhibitors.
Combinatorial chemistry:
- Identified new purification methods using polymer bound scavenging reagents
- Co-authored JACS paper on purification using resin reagents
- Developed multi-step chemical reactions to run in a parallel format.
- Integrated the use of Parallel Chemistry into the chemistry department
Business development:
- Evaluated and hired companies as strategic partners
EDUCATION
Post-Doctorial Research with Prof. Philip Magnus
UT at Austin, Texas
Ph.D. Organic Chemistry
University of Manchester
B.Sc. Organic Chemistry
University of Manchester
MEMBERSHIPS / AFFILIATIONS
Graduate of the Royal Chemistry Society (UK)
American Chemical Society
15 years of community service by volunteering with organizations such as Family Promise and BSF.