John Atack

Prof. Atack is currently Sêr Cymru Professor of Translational Drug Discovery and Director of the Medicines Discovery Institute (MDI) at Cardiff University. He joined the MDI after spending a 5-year period as Director of the Sussex Drug Discovery Centre at the University of Sussex in Brighton. The MDI was officially opened in March, 2019 and comprises a multidisciplinary team of around 40 biologists and chemists prosecuting a number of mental health-focussed drug discovery projects that range from a drug undergoing Phase 1 clinical studies to drug targets at the earliest stages (target identification and target validation) of the preclinical drug discovery process.

Prior to his time in academia, Prof. Atack gained extensive (>20 years) experience in neuroscience drug discovery at the Merck Sharp & Dohme Neuroscience Research Centre in Harlow, UK (1989-2006) and then (2006-2012) with Janssen Pharmaceutical initially in San Diego and thereafter in Beerse, Belgium. He has worked on enzyme, ion channel (particularly GABA_A receptors) and GPCR targets that cover a range of CNS disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, cognitive impairment and addiction. He has over 160 publications and has led projects all the way from Target Identification/Target Validation through to clinical development and Phase 2a Proof-of-Concept.