Profile

I’m a Scotsman who studied chemistry at Edinburgh University.  Because I wanted to work in the pharmaceutical industry, I moved to the south of England and I’ve been here ever since, apart from 3 years living in Massachusetts, USA. I’m a medicinal chemist, and live with my wife, son, daughter and a great big fur ball of a cat called Teddy. I love to be in the outdoors – anything to do with mountains – climbing, hiking, biking and snowboarding.  When I can’t do that, I love to play guitar and make music, or cook with my children. We do the best banoffee pie you’ve ever had!

I am originally an organic chemist, which means I made compounds containing mainly carbon, which is what our bodies (and drug molecules!) are predominantly made of.  Working in the pharmaceutical industry, I got my training as a medicinal chemist while I was making molecules in the lab.  Medicinal chemistry is about analysing all the data on a compound and how it interacts with biological systems, and designing compounds that can be drugs.  We have to make sure that a compound will be stable and dissolve in the acid of your stomach, then be absorbed into your blood and get to where it needs to go in your body.  When it gets there, it has to be active enough to do what we need it to do, but not cause any side effects or toxic effects. It also has to last long enough (about a day) – but not too long, as we don’t want it to stay in the body forever!

It’s a really challenging set of problems to solve, and takes time, working with a huge amount of different people.  I work with biologists, computational chemists, synthetic chemists and metabolism experts, to name a few, but this is one of the best parts of my job – you need a big team that works really well together to solve the problems!

I get up really early, as I work for a Chinese company and need to talk to the scientists who are 8 hrs ahead of UK time. My chemistry team is in Xi’An in China, and the biology teams are in Beijing. Luckily they all speak good English as my Mandarin is terrible!  Once I’ve talked to them, I spend a lot of time analysing the data they produce, and use this to design new molecules, using computers to model how the compounds might behave before we make them.  I have to talk to the experts in my group here in Hertfordshire and make sure we use the information properly.  I work with clients in the USA and so when they wake up after my lunch, I have to spend time discussing the science and results of the compounds we have made with them.  Often, people have different opinions based on their experience, so people and presenting skills are really important to make sure we choose the best strategy to make the compounds.  Once all the meetings are over, I cook dinner for the family, and think about the problems we’re trying to solve.  I’m always having good ideas for compounds while I’m stirring something in a pan!