John Lyons is Senior Vice President of Translational Research with responsibility for the development of translational strategies for Astex oncology programmes at Astex.

John joined Astex as Director of Oncology in October 2003 and was named Senior Vice President of Translational Research in 2017. He has 30 years of experience in cancer biology, preclinical and clinical development and joined Astex from SuperGen Inc., where, as Senior Director of Scientific Development, he was responsible for the development of Dacogen™ approved for MDS, a form of leukemia.

Prior to this, he spent 8 years at Onyx Pharmaceuticals where he led the team that discovered Nexavar™, a signal transduction inhibitor approved in the US and Europe for renal cell carcinoma and hepatocellular carcinoma and Stivarga™ a multi kinase inhibitor approved for gastro-intestinal stromal tumours and colorectal cancers. Earlier in his career he worked as a post-doc at Cetus Corporation in Emeryville, California, USA. Dr Lyons is a member of AACR and ASCO. He obtained his PhD in 1989 from the University of Ulm, Germany. He has over 60 peer reviewed publications and 20 company related patents.