Alastair Parkes currently leads medicinal chemistry in antibacterial drug discovery programmes at Evotec, a drug discovery alliance and development partnership company.

Evotec is focused on rapidly progressing innovative product approaches with leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, academics, patient advocacy groups, and venture capitalists.

Alastair has worked at the company since 2006, first in the internal research department on proprietary central nervous system drug discovery programmes, followed by three years in oncology and, in antibacterial research since January 2014.

Over the years his work has focused on the development of small-molecule inhibitors of targets in the biosynthesis of LipidA, peptidoglycan synthesis, and toxin/antitoxin systems.

Alastair has presented the results of Evotec’s antibacterial research at several international conferences and has published in this field. He is a regular speaker on antibacterial drug discovery at Oxford University’s Centre for Doctoral Training in the UK and has been a Grand Challenger at a BBSRC Skills School on drug discovery – posing a challenge on the penetration of Gram-negative bacteria.

He is a named inventor on patents in several disease areas and in 2017, was granted a Wellcome Trust Pathfinder Award to investigate hybridisation as a strategy to broaden the spectrum of antibacterial agents.

Before joining Evotec, Alastair was employed at the University of Manchester during his post-doctoral studies. He holds MChem and DPhil degrees in organic chemistry from the University of Oxford.