Tom Blundell

Sir Tom Blundell is Emeritus Professor and Director of Research in the Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, where he has held the Sir William Dunn Professorship since 1995. He is also Emeritus Fellow at a Cambridge college and co-founder of Astex Therapeutics. A Fellow of the Royal Society, the Academy of Medical Sciences and Academia Europaea, he has received honorary doctorates from fifteen universities.

Education and academic career:

• Professor of Crystallography, Birkbeck College, University of London (1976)
• Honorary Director, Imperial Cancer Research Fund Unit of Structural Molecular Biology (1989)
• Sir William Dunn Professor of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge (1995–present)
• Chairman, Council of Biological Sciences, University of Cambridge (from 2003)

Research interests:

Tom Blundell’s research integrates structural biology and computational chemistry to understand multiprotein assemblies that control cell regulation, DNA repair, and mitosis. His group uses X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy to resolve macromolecular structures, then applies structure-guided fragment-based discovery to develop chemical probes and therapeutics against cancer and mycobacterial infections. Recent work focuses on DNA-PKcs in non-homologous end joining, anti-tuberculosis inhibitors, and SARS-CoV-2 targets.

Scientific awards and honours:

• Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS)
• Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci)
• Member of Academia Europaea
• Honorary doctorates from fifteen universities worldwide

Leadership, boards and grants:

• Director-General, Agricultural and Food Research Council (1991–1994)
• Founding Chief Executive, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) (1994–1996)
• Chairman, Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (1998–2005)
• President, UK Biosciences Federation (2004–2008)
• Co-founder and SAB member, Astex Therapeutics (oncology drugs in early clinical trials)
• Non-Executive Director, Celltech (1996–2005)
• Science advisory roles with Pfizer, UCB, SmithKline Beecham

Labs, teams and resources:

Blundell directs an interdisciplinary research group housed in the Department of Biochemistry, Cambridge, with access to world-class synchrotron and cryo-EM facilities. The team combines wet-lab structural biology with computational platforms such as PDBe-KB, ProtCHOIR, Graphein and SDM for structural bioinformatics and AI-driven drug discovery.