Prof. Dr Chas Bountra
Translational Medicine
University of Oxford, England
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Prof. Dr Chas Bountra
Chas is Professor of Translational Medicine (Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine) and Professorial Fellow (Keble College) at the University of Oxford. He has worked with senior colleagues to attract funding and establish a ‘Target Discovery Institute’, a ‘Dementia Drug Discovery Institute’ the ‘Centre for Medicines Discovery’ and an incubator (‘BioEscalator’) within the University, and a national facility (Rosalind Franklin Institute’) developing new drug enabling technologies.
As Pro-Vice Chancellor for Innovation – University of Oxford (2018-2025) he has incentivised academics to create new companies, increased the number of female founders and females on C suite, created a university wide entrepreneurship training programme, built connectivity with > 300 university spinouts, science parks and large local science infrastructures, catalysed industry partnerships and enabled increased venture capital and philanthropic income. By championing role models across the university, he has changed the attitude to innovation across the university. As Director of Oxford University Innovation, he has helped build arguably the best university technology transfer office, in the country. Colleagues have now suggested that Oxfordshire is the fastest growing innovation ecosystem in the world. More recently he has been attracting more investors, corporates and developers into the ecosystem. His goal is to build the first trillion pound company in the UK.
As Director of the Structural Genomics Consortium (2008-2020) he established a leading research group in human protein structural biology and epigenetics chemical biology, and arguably one of the most successful open innovation, public-private partnerships in the world. The group generated several thousand drug discovery tools, enabled several thousand publications, proprietary programmes, and the creation of new companies. The team accelerated innovation in drug target discovery.
As Vice President and Head of Biology at GlaxoSmithKline (2002-2008), he was involved in the identification of >30 clinical candidates for many gastro-intestinal, inflammatory and neuro-psychiatric diseases. In earlier roles in Glaxo or GlaxoWellcome, he was involved in the launch and development of the first treatment for Irritable Bowel Syndrome (Alosetron) and was the first to show that neurokinin NK1 antagonists are anti-emetic in preclinical and clinical studies.
In all these roles he has mentored and help grow the careers of many young researchers.
He has through Board roles advised many funders, charities, universities, research institutes, SMEs and pharma companies, and helped >40 teams of innovators and entrepreneurs create new commercial and social enterprises. His current passions are developing new treatments for dementia and multi-morbidities associated with ageing, driving new approaches to improve the lives of patients living with psychiatric disease, and accelerating innovations to mitigate the climate emergency.
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