SGC Oxford wins Royal Society of Chemistry 2014 Rita and John Cornforth Award

The Group led by Professor Chas Bountra, Chief Scientist of SGC Oxford, has been awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry's Rita and John Cornforth Award 2014 for "... world leading collaborative research across the disciplines of structural biology, medicinal chemistry, chemical biology and enzymology towards understanding and exploiting the potential of epigenetics as a target family for future drug discovery".

The SGC is generating high quality chemical tools and reagents for novel human proteins and then working with a network of more than 250 academic labs and now nine pharmaceutical companies to dissect biological pathways and thereby identify new targets for drug discovery.

Chas said: "This is a result of the hard work of many brilliant colleagues in the SGC, our wonderful network of collaborators across academia and our many expert colleagues in the pharmaceutical industry. Together we are creating open tools for target discovery, reducing duplication and catalysing science. We are grateful to the many visionary leaders and funders, who initiated this bold experiment and have continued to drive the creation of a new ecosystem for the discovery of new medicines for patients."