Joaquín Ángel Pastor

Joaquin Pastor obtained his PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of Alcalá in 1994. From 1994 to 1998 he made a postdoctoral stay in the group led by Prof. KC Nicolaou at The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla US. In this period his research focused on the Solid Phase Synthesis of natural products with antitumor activity, highlighting the synthesis and structure-activity studies of anti-mitotic agents epotholines, paper published in Nature in 1997. After returning to Spain accepted an offer of Janssen Pharmaceutica-pharmaceutical (Johnson & Johnson PRD) as head of the newly created group Medicinal Chemistry of High Performance. While staying at Janssen held various positions as a team leader on projects and therapeutic areas such as CNS, metabolic disorders and oncology. He was also appointed head of Group Generation "Hits" at European level within the organization. In 2008 he moved to the CNIO Director of the Department of Medical Chemistry Experimental Therapeutics Program, where he played a leading role in several projects for new drug discovery targets of therapeutic interest in oncology. In March 2011 he was appointed Director of the Program, its current position, which conducts drug discovery activities of the Centre. The mission of this program is to bridge the early discoveries in cancer biology, from basic research groups, and the "pharmaceutical industry", responsible for the clinical development of new drugs. To this task the program conducts preclinical drug discovery producing advanced composites, candidates for clinical development by achieving "proof of concept" in animal models of cancer. This operational model has resulted in several candidates for therapeutic targets that have been transferred to pharmaceutical companies, being especially relevant if ATR inhibitors licensed to Merck Serono. Joaquin has authored or co-authored 41 scientific publications and 36 patents in the field of drug discovery.