Dr Murray Brown

Murray Brown joined SmithKline Beecham in 1997 (subsequently GSK) after completing PhD and post-doctoral research at Cambridge University studying enzymes of the Shikimate pathway and polyketide synthases. He has had a variety of roles in early drug discovery in the hit ID, lead optimisation and early safety prediction arenas leading groups developing in vitro biochemical and cellular assays. Recognising that reagent generation, assay development and screening skills could equally be applied to the discovery and optimisation of novel enzymes he led an Innovation group with Platform Technologies and Sciences seeking biological alternatives to chemical synthesis. He is now part of the Synthetic Biochemistry team within the Advanced Manufacturing Technologies group developing platform capabilities for faster, better development of biocatalysts and Synthetic Biology approaches leading to robust biological processes for manufacturing drug substances. He has led several external research collaborations taking an open innovation approach to developing novel technological approaches. He is lead Coordinator for Chem21 (a €26M Innovative Medicines Initiative project), and represents GSK on various Synthetic Biology advisory boards such as for SynbiCITE, BrisSynBio, SYNBIOCHEM, BIOCATNET NIBB, SynBio CDT, and SynBERC.