Sir Steve Jackson

About

Sir Steve is the Originator of Olaparib/Lynparza, recently partnered by AstraZeneca with Merck and valued as an asset at up to $17BN, and used to treat 140,000 patients worldwide with ovarian, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancer. He is a repeat entrepreneur, and most recently founded Adrestia Therapeutics with Ahren in 2018, an early-stage drug discovery platform, which was acquired by Insmed Inc in 2023. Sir Steve is the University of Cambridge Frederick James Quick Professor of Biology. He is Senior Group Leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute and Associate Group Leader at the Gurdon Institute. He is a leading expert in the field of DNA repair and DNA-damage signalling and invented Lynparza, the world’s first marketed DNA-repair enzyme inhibitor, an effective treatment of breast and other cancers. Sir Steve’s awards include the Johann Anton Merck Award (2022), Royal Society Mullard Award (2020), Heineken Prize for Science by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science (2016) and the UK GSN Medal for his contributions to the field of genome stability. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and a member of EMBO.