Dr. N. B. Lydon

Biography

Dr. Nicholas B. Lydon, also known as Nick, Ph.D., FRS leads Granite Biopharma LLC. Dr. Lydon has more than 15 years of experience in the discovery and development of kinase inhibitors to the Ambit team and is known for his discovery and preclinical development of Gleevec(TM). He served as the Vice President of Small Molecule Drug Discovery and Research Informatics at Amgen, Inc., where he oversaw research in medicinal chemistry, modeling, screening and many other departments. Prior to joining Amgen in December 2000, he founded and served as the President and Chief Executive Officer for Kinetix Pharmaceuticals from 1997 to 2000. He managed the acquisition of Kinetix by Amgen after just three years of operations. Prior to this, he was the Program Team Leader for Tyrosine Protein Kinase Inhibitors at CIBA-GEIGY/Novartis AG. He then joined Schering-Plough Corporation, where he served from 1982 to 1985 in Paris and Lyon, France. While at Schering-Plough, his research work involved studies on Alpha, Beta and Gamma interferons. He moved to CIBA-GEIGY, in Basel, Switzerland, where he was employed from 1985 to 1997. At Ciba-Geigy, he was responsible for the protein kinase inhibitor program. Dr. Lydon and his team discovered a number of protein kinase inhibitors. He is an Advisor at Avalon Ventures. He is a founder of Granite Biopharma, LLC. He has been a Director of Blueprint Medicines Corp since April 2011 and serves as its Member of Scientific Advisory Board. Dr. Lydon has been a Director at AnaptysBio, Inc. since November 2005 and serves as its and Member of Scientific Advisory Board. He served as a Scientific Advisor and Director at Ambit Biosciences Corporation. He has been awarded the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize in May 2001, the AACR-Bruce F. Cain Memorial Award and the Charles F. Kettering Prize from the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation in 2002 for his contributions to the discovery and development of Gleevec. His thesis involved research work on adenylate cyclase and cAMP dependent protein kinase. Dr. Lydon attended the University of Leeds, England, from 1975 to 1978 earning a B.Sc. in Biochemistry and zoology and also received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Medical Sciences Institute, University of Dundee, Scotland in 1982.

Research Interest

Biopharma