Astex announces new senior management team appointments

Cambridge, UK, 6 October 2025 - Astex Pharmaceuticals (UK) (“Astex”), a pharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery and development of novel small molecule therapeutics for oncology and diseases of the central nervous system has today announced new senior management appointments to drive the next phase of the Company’s continued growth and development.

Michelle Jones, formerly Chief Operating Officer (COO), has been appointed President while Gianni Chessari has been appointed as Chief Scientific Officer (CSO). Michelle Jones joined Astex in 2000. In her most recent role as COO, she has been driving the strategic oversight and alignment of various business, finance and science functions within the company, giving her a deep understanding of the business, Astex’s unique strengths and the opportunities ahead.

Gianni Chessari joined Astex in 2002. In his most recent role as Senior Vice President and Head of Drug Discovery his focus has been to continue to build on and improve Astex’s industry-leading capability in fragment-based drug discovery and structure-based drug design. Harnessing the pioneering improvements that Astex is making in Cryo-EM, informatics and in developing computational, AI and machine learning platforms using what is arguably one of the largest proprietary datasets of X-Ray and cryo-EM protein-ligand structures, Gianni will now lead Astex research initiatives to spearhead the discovery and development of next-generation therapeutics.

Michelle Jones said:

For 25 years I have seen how much the team at Astex cares about the science behind our business, and the impact we can deliver. I am excited to continue to make Astex successful, working alongside my talented colleagues.

Gianni Chessari said:

I'm excited to lead the scientific team at Astex and to work with Michelle and the senior leadership to drive the next phase of innovation at Astex with the aim to continue to build on our past successes in helping to discover and develop new medicines for patients.