Ten Questions with Neil Carragher

Ten questions with Professor Neil Carragher

 

What does innovation mean to you? 

Developing a novel solution to a problem that has practical application to yield a positive impact on society.

 

What has been your biggest success? 

Working in close collaboration with my medicinal chemist colleague Professor Asier Unciti-Broceta to develop a drug candidate from scratch in our small academic research labs which has been licenced to a US-based pharmaceutical company and is now in phase 1 clinical trials in oncology.

 

What failure has helped shape you? 

After working as a postdoctoral researcher in academia I unsuccessfully applied for several academic fellowships to obtain my own independent research funding. As a result of this failure, I instead looked for jobs in industry and took up a position within the Advanced Science and Technology Lab at AstraZeneca where I led a team with a remit to advance drug discovery research and development across disease areas. This post provided me with deep knowledge of the drug discovery process and the challenges facing the biopharmaceutical industry and that experience has helped me establish an innovative academic drug discovery unit.

 

What would your friends say your greatest strengths and weaknesses are? 

• Strengths: Determined and hard working.
• Weaknesses: Terrible work/life balance.

 

What book do you recommend to others? 

John Simpson's “A Mad World, My Masters: Tales from a Traveller's Life” - Great insight into other international cultures, politics, modern history and true-to-life human behaviour.

 

If you had one more hour in the day how would you spend it?

I would love time to read another scientific paper and learn something new.

 

What scares you?

Being scared i.e. unprepared.

 

What piece of advice has stuck with you? 

Be true to yourself and stick to, and be confident in, your principles.

 

What future innovation would you like to see happen in your lifetime?  

I would like to see improved clinical success rates in drug discovery for the most complex diseases which afflict our society including dementia, mental health and cancers. This requires acceptance of alternative drug discovery strategies which are guided by phenotypic observations and/or activity upon pathway networks rather than by activity of a single biological target and thus complementing the currently dominant one-drug/one-target/one-disease paradigm.

 

What gives you hope?  

The selflessness of the silent majority of human beings.