Our team
Read more about who we are.
Read more about who we are.
Ana has 17 years of experience in oncology research from both academia and industry. She received Ph.D. in cellular biology and health economics education from the Medical Faculty, University of Oslo. She conducted her academic research on solid tumor therapies at the Department of Pathology, Oslo University Hospital, and The Wistar Institute, Philadelphia US.
She recently held a translational research director position at Oncopeptides AB where she was responsible for developing and implementing translational research strategies in the early and late-stage clinical trial pipeline. Before joining Oncopeptides AB, she was also the principal investigator for in vivo pharmacology at Medivir AS.
Thomas has >15 years experience as full professor, researching DNA damage response (DDR) and DNA repair at University of Oxford, Univ of Sheffield, Stockholm University and now Karolinska Institutet. He currently heads a large multidisciplinary translational research group at SciLifeLab, Helleday Laboratory, focusing on understanding DDR biology and translating the findings into novel anti-cancer treatments concepts and drugs. The group was first to demonstrate the synthetic lethality concept for treating cancer by showing homologous recombination defective cancers (e.g., BRCA) were sensitive to PARP inhibitors. Professor Helleday has been awarded numerous eminent international grants and awards in recognition of his research accomplishments including the Eppendorf-Nature Young European Investigator Award (2005) and ERC advanced grants (2010 and 2016).
Petra has a MSc degree in Biology from Uppsala University and has a lot of expertise in the DDR area and has been involved not only in the MTHFD2 project for many years but also been leading development of novel targets.
Martin has 30 years of experience as a medicinal chemist and project leader in both industry and academic settings, with experience from Oxford Diversity PLC, Pharmacia AB, Biovitrum AB, Orexo AB and Oxcia AB. He built-up a medicinal chemistry team in the Helleday Lab, which he leads since 2010, based within SciLifeLab, Karolinska Institutet. He has been closely involved in chemical manufacturing and control and pharmaceutical development and in the discovery of several small molecule inhibitors. He received a PhD in chemistry from the University of Edinburgh in 1989.
Martin is a medicinal chemist with 20 years of experience from Biovitrum, AstraZeneca, Biochromix and Karolinska Institutet. He joined the Helleday lab in 2013 and has a strong interest and expertise in drug discovery and metabolism. Martin led the medchem lead optimisation work in the MTHFD2 project, which involved >10 medicinal chemists, and has also taken responsibility for biological strategies.
Evert joined the Helleday laboratory in 2013 as a computational chemist and project leader, after having worked for 15 years in the pharmaceutical industry (Pharmacopeia Inc, Pharmacia & Upjohn, Biovitrum and Beactica). He has a strong interest and expertise in target discovery, fragment- and structure-based drug discovery, computational medicinal chemistry and cheminformatics. Evert has been instrumental to initiating and developing the MTHFD2 project. He holds a Masters degree in pharmacy and an PhD in medicinal chemistry from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
Professor Johann de Bono is Regius Professor of Cancer Research at The Institute of Cancer Research and honorary consultant in medical oncology at The Royal Marsden Hospital. He led on the development of abiraterone, cabazitaxel, enzalutamide, olaparib, lutetium PSMA and the molecular genomic stratification and germline sequencing of advanced prostate cancer. Professor de Bono leads the Drug Development Unit at the Royal Marsden which comprises >100 staff and conducts >50 Phase I clinical trials at any one time and runs a research laboratory. He has been involved in developing more than 200 new agents and is currently evaluating many new drugs in early clinical trials. He has published >600 papers and has mentored many PhD students.
Ruth Plummer is Professor of Experimental Cancer Medicine, Newcastle University and an honorary consultant medical oncologist in Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She directs the Sir Bobby Robson Cancer Trials Research Centre and leads the Newcastle Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre and CRUK Newcastle Cancer Centre. The focus of her research is first in human clinical trials, running a busy early phase trials practice which includes studies with novel small molecules, antibodies, immunotherapies and cellular therapies. She has taken multiple agents targeting DNA repair into the clinic, including the first-in-class PARP and ATR inhibtors. Her NHS practice is in skin cancer, treating all types of melanoma with systemic therapies.
Nationally she sits on grant funding committees for CRUK and the MRC and was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2018 for her work developing PARP inhibitors as novel cancer treatments for patients. She was awarded an MBE in the 2022 Queen’s Jubilee Birthday Honours for Services to Medicine.
Tim Yap, MD, PhD is a Medical Oncology Physician-Scientist and a Tenure-Track Associate Professor in the Departments of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics (Phase I Program), and Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC). He is also the Medical Director of the Institute for Applied Cancer Science, and Associate Director of Translational Research in the Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy at MDACC which is an integrated research and clinical trials program aimed at implementing personalized cancer therapy and improving patient outcomes. Prior to his current position, Dr. Yap was a Consultant Medical Oncologist at The Royal Marsden Hospital in London, UK and National Institute for Health Research BRC Clinician Scientist at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK.
Sarah is a Professor of Medical Oncology in the University of Sheffield and Honorary Consultant in Medical Oncology at Weston Park Cancer Centre, Sheffield. Professor Danson qualified in 1996 from the University of Nottingham and was a Specialist Registrar and Cancer Research UK Clinical Research Fellow in Pharmacology at the Christie Hospital, Manchester before moving to Sheffield in November 2006. Since 2019 she is chair of the Adult ECMC Network in the UK and NIHR National Specialty Lead for Cancer: Early Phase.
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