Curriculum Vitae

 

Christopher Southan B.Sc.Hons, M.Sc., Ph.D., Special Prof.

 

 

Summary:

 

  • Experienced and accomplished multidisciplinary senior bioscientist
  • Record of high achievement in bioinformatics, proteomics, genomics, bioactive chemical databases, drug target discovery and protein chemistry.
  • Extensive background in pharmaceutical and biotechnology R&D.
  • Successes in team leadership, project management and strategy planning
  • Over 70 publications including 40 peer-reviewed papers
  • Over 20 published patents, 10 of which have been granted.
  • Many invited external presentations
  • Wide network of academic and commercial contacts

 

Details:  http://www.cdsouthan.info/CDS_prof.htm  or http://www.linkedin.com/in/cdsouthan

 

 

Contact: Swedish mobile +46(0)702-530710,  home +46 (0)31681630  cdsouthan@hotmail.com

 

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Recent Employment Achievements:

 

May 2008 – July 2009 ELIXIR Database Survey Co-ordinator, EMBL Outstation, European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, UK

 

  • Developed a comprehensive questionnaire to capture key metrics from European database providers for the ELIXIR project (http://www.elixir-europe.org/)
  • Completed pilot survey and distributed main survey to over 480 databases
  • Results included in ELIXIR-related presentations by the EBI Director, Deputy Director and other Work Package leaders
  • Exploration of display methods for result analysis
  • Committee member for Work Package 2 (ELIXIR Strategy for Data Resources)
  • Inputs to EBI Druggablity Portal and Biomolecular Interaction Standards

 

 

Jan 2006 – Nov 2007: Internal Secondment to Global Compound Science, DECS Lead Generation, Computational Chemistry, Mölndal

 

  • Supported development of a major database application of  targets, compounds and assay data by presentations, user documentation and exploitation examples
  • Provided strategic impact assessment, awareness presentations and exploitation guidelines for PubChem and other external sources of bioactive compound data
  • Successful bioinformatics support for specific computational chemistry projects
  • Key deliveries of gene>pharmacology mappings for internal databases
  • Developed global contact network for drug target sequence-to-compound relationships, including managers at GVKBIO, PubChem, and DrugBank

 

March 2004 – Dec 2005: Principal Scientist, Target Development & Bioinformatics, Department of Molecular Pharmacology AstraZeneca R&, Mölndal, Sweden.  

 

  • Managed a team of five bioinformaticians and two Masters Students that produced major Departmental and global project impacts
  • Provided advanced bioinformatic analysis for the decision support and progression of 16 projects including the Protease Platform
  • Awarded two promotions and Swedish expert tax reduction status in 2004
  • Key inputs to the AZ global Bioinformatics Strategy Steering Group and Target Development & Bioinformatics Section Management Team
  • Lead Working Group that successfully introduced global unrestricted utilisation of external bioinformatics resources
  • Contributed to business case for successful major investment in bioinformatics workflow capability
  • Appointed Special Professor in Proteomics at University of Nottingham

 

 

Dec 2001 – Jan 2004:  Proteome Discovery Bioinformatician, Oxford GlycoSciences

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  • Discovery of unknown proteins, splice variants, SNPs and other marketing examples from the Protein Atlas of the human genome database.
  • Presentations to Confirmant Scientific Advisory Board on human gene number resulted in major revenue gain for OGS and a paper in Proteomics
  • Inputs for database rationalisation, cross-species comparisons, ontologies, and analysis of unknown proteins provided for major OGS customer projects.
  • Delivered 11 external presentations, published four papers and three chapters  
  • Two Bioinformatics M.Sc. students awarded distinctions.

 

 

Jan 2001-Dec 2001:  Head of Computational Biology, Gemini Genomics, Cambridge

 

  • Key results generated from analysis of candidate disease-associated genes.
  • Supervised selection of key gene target classes for coding SNP mining. 
  • Managed a major external project to identify all non-synonymous SNPs providing a key resource for disease-association studies.
  • Valued inputs to Business Development for progressing collaborations.  

 

Oct 1987-Dec 2000: Senior Investigator, Bioinformatics Target Discovery, SmithKline Beecham, Harlow.  Initially working as a Protein Chemist and HPLC specialist (1987-1995) then internally recruited into Bioinformatics Target Discovery (1996-2000).

 

  • Analysis of proteomic data discovered novel family of rat secreted Ly6 proteins.
  • Six publications appearing in 2000
  • Project leader for mining novel proteases from EST and genomic data. This discovered 170 novel protease and inhibitor sequences, was extended for two years because of the success rate,  produced over 20 patents and spawned several drug target studies including the Alzheimer’s beta-secretase, BACE1
  • Managed a team that used robotics and cocktail mixtures to achieve a screening record of 1130 compounds for HPLC peptidolytic viral protease assays.
  • Invented plastic high-speed microbore HPLC columns used in many projects for protein purification
  • Complete sequence of 2nd novel lipase (NSDL) assembled from EST data confirmed as 98 % correct. Patents filed and drug target study initiated.
  • Breakthrough identification of novel LpPLA2 enzyme sequence in Human Genome Sciences EST data. This was highlighted as a major success in being the first SB genomic target approved for development
  • Introduction  of MALDI peptide mass-mapping for proteins from 2D gels.
  • Operation of ABI 477 protein sequencer for extensive sequencing of Dopamine beta hydroxylase and elucidation of attachment sites of mechanistic inhibitors
  • Successful co-supervision of four Ph.D. students and two Sandwich students

 

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University Qualifications:

 

 

Nationality: British, Sex: male, Marital status: married with three children, Date of birth: 19/05/52.