Dr Stephen Young

Steve started his research career in medicinal chemistry at MSD neuroscience research centre in Harlow where he worked on the neurokinin and NMDA projects. His career path then took him through several biotech mergers and acquisitions with Novabiochem, Proteus and Protherics and became Research director at Tularik Ltd/Amgen where he further developed a keen interest in structure based drug discovery and played a significant part in developing and applying virtual screening technology to design libraries for rapid optimisation of hits. As head of chemistry at Vertex Pharmaceuticals Europe he lead chemistry teams in number of kinase programs with therapeutic focus on Oncology and Auto-Immune Disease. At Sygnature Discovery he is now Vice President, Business Development.