Chris Abell


Christopher Abell is a British biological chemist. As of 2016, he is Professor of Biological Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Cambridge and Todd-Hamied Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. On his 2016 election to the Royal Society, the society described his research as having "changed the face of drug discovery."

Education

Abell was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, gaining an Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences in 1979 followed by PhD on the topic of polyketide biosynthesis for research supervised by in 1982.

Career and research

Abell held a research fellowship in the laboratory of David E. Cane at Brown University, Providence, USA, studying terpene biosynthesis. In 1984, Abell joined the Department of Chemistry of the University of Cambridge, successively holding the positions of demonstrator, lecturer and reader in chemical biology, and becoming Professor in Biological Chemistry in 2002. He has held visiting professorships at the Australian National University in Canberra, University of Santiago de Compostela, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, and the Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse. He has been a fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge since 1986; and is the college's Todd-Hamied Fellow. In 2013 he was appointed the first Director of Postdoctoral Affairs at the University of Cambridge, and in 2016 was appointed Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research.
Abell has published over 200 papers. His research interests include vitamin and amino acid biosynthesis as targets for the rational design of antimicrobials; fragment-based approaches to enzyme inhibition; bacterial and plant riboswitches; reactions in microdroplets; and biological nanotechnology. His former doctoral students include Shankar Balasubramanian.

Commercial ventures

Abell is the co-founder of several companies. In 1999, he co-founded Astex Technology Ltd, which uses fragment-based drug discovery technology to discover cancer therapeutics. In 2001, he co-founded Akubio, which developed biosensors for detecting bacteria and viruses; it was acquired by Inverness Medical Innovations in 2008. In 2010, he co-founded Sphere Fluidics to develop microdroplet technology. In 2012 he co-founded Aqdot, a company developing a new microencapsulation technology.

Publications

His awards include a Research Fellowship at King's College, Cambridge, the Imperial Chemical Industries Prize in Organic Chemistry in 1992, the Hickinbottom Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and a Yamada Science Foundation Award. In 2008 he was the MIT Novartis Lecturer, and in 2011 was a BIC International Fellow at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2012 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2016.