About Neil Thompson

Over the last 30+ years, Neil’s career has seen him progress more than 10 drugs to patients and he’s led a number of drug discovery projects in areas of cardiovascular, neurology, inflammation and oncology among others.

For 15 years, Neil was Senior Vice President of Biology at Astex Pharmaceuticals, helping the company establish itself at the forefront of drug discovery by leading the biology and pre-clinical teams to deliver two new cancer drugs (Kisqali; ribociclib and Balversa; erdafitinib in partnership with Novartis and Janssen respectively) to market. Before that, he was Director of the Immunology Platform at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

Neil is also Deputy Chair of the UK MRC DPFS panel and Chair of the MRC CLD/ADI committee, has authored more than 40 publications and patents and sits on the advisory boards of several scientific institutions in the UK.

Neil received his doctorate in Biochemistry from King’s College London.