Matthew Thomas

Biography

  As Head of Department RIA Bioscience Regeneration, my role is to build a vibrant new department focused on lung regeneration, and lead AstraZeneca to targets and technologies which transform the lives of patients whose lung disease puts them in greatest need of help. Having spent more than 16 years in pharmaceutical research, I am experienced in all aspects of drug discovery – from target finding, pathways investigation and pathophysiology to translational pre-clinical systems/biomarkers and the route into patients. My principal motivators lie in the more exploratory aspects of early target research, which reach beyond familiar technology into new concepts in disease biology and novel modalities by which to impact them. I have extensive experience in respiratory disease, including pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), cystic fibrosis (CF), severe asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). After receiving my BSc and being awarded a PhD at Kings College, London, in 2000, I continued research as a postdoctoral fellow until late 2001. I then began my career as a research investigator at Novartis, spending 12 years in a variety of research roles, exploring respiratory disease. Here I was a project team leader for multiple successful drug discovery projects and a key contributor to Novartis’ pre-clinical respiratory disease strategy and discovery portfolio. I joined AstraZeneca, Gothenburg, Sweden, in May 2014 to develop, through internal and external collaboration, in vitro and in vivo systems optimised to reveal complex aberrant biology observed in remodelled lung tissue in support of ideas and projects addressing pulmonary fibrosis. I have also held a position as visiting professor of pharmocology at Bath University since 2015.

Research Interest

 RIA Bioscience Regeneration