Andy worked for Pfizer for over 30 years as a medicinal chemist before moving to Imperial College in 2011. The bulk of his career was spent on novel treatments for cardiovascular and infectious diseases, resulting in the discovery of the medicines sildenafil (Viagra, Revatio) and voriconazole (Vfend). Most recently, he worked across all therapeutic areas covered by the Sandwich site (Pain Therapeutics, Anti-infectives, Asthma and Respiratory) in a Lead Discovery leadership role. He has extensive experience of structure-based drug design programmes across seven different gene families. He had additional responsibilities for compound file expansion and curation, directed purchase, synthesis and removal of undesirable structures. He also led global teams to improve usage of high throughput screening data and to build the Pfizer monomer collection.
Andy is the author of 26 publications in peer reviewed journals and 27 patents in the drug discovery area. His work was recognized by a 2004 Pfizer Achievement Award and a 2008 ACS Achievement Award in Organic Chemistry. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2011.