Healx, the AI-powered, patient-inspired technology company pioneering the next generation of drug discovery, is proud to announce that world-renowned computational drug discovery expert, Nathan Brown, has joined the team as Director of Digital Chemistry. 

Nathan joins from BenevolentAI, where he led the Cheminformatics team and was responsible for the research and development of new and effective approaches for computational drug design. Globally recognised as a thought-leader in cheminformatics and computational drug discovery, Nathan is the inventor of the first multi-objective de novo molecular design system and has published over 50 papers and four books on the field. A Fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry, he is also the 2017 recipient of the Corwin Hansch Award – an award given by the Hansch-Fujita Foundation to a scholar under the age of 40 for significant contributions to the field of computer-aided drug design.

Prior to his work at BenevolentAI, Nathan was Head of In Silico Medicinal Chemistry at The Institute of Cancer Research in London where he founded and led the In Silico Medicinal Chemistry team for over ten years. In this capacity, he delivered significant scientific impact on drugs in active clinical trials, and was responsible for the development of new algorithms for drug discovery. He was also a Presidential Research Fellow at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research. 

Andrew Watson, VP of Artificial Intelligence, said “I’m excited to welcome Nathan to our ever-expanding team of experts working to bring treatments to rare disease patients. He brings with him a wealth of experience in the field of digital chemistry – built over decades of pioneering research and application – and he is the perfect person to have at the helm as we build out our capabilities in this space”. 

The Director of Digital Chemistry role is a new one within the company and reflects Healx’s ambition to build a truly AI-led approach to drug discovery. In his role, Nathan will work closely with Healx’s medicinal chemists, cheminformaticians, and machine learning researchers to direct further enhancement of drug candidates predicted by our Healnet AI platform and optimise drug properties based on structure-based design as well as omic and phenotypic endpoints.  

Commenting on his appointment, Nathan said: “I’m delighted to be joining Healx at what is an exciting time for the growth of the company. I’m really looking forward to working with the diverse talent at Healx and continuing to build a terrific capability in digital chemistry applied to cutting edge AI and data-driven drug discovery.”

Nathan will be looking to rapidly scale Healx’s cheminformatics expertise and technology, and will be ramping up recruitment for his team in the coming weeks. Those interested in joining the company can find out more about job openings here.