Biography

Sandra Jacob (nee Cowan) is an Executive Director at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, in Basel, Switzerland. She studied chemistry and obtained her PhD in structural biology at the University of Melbourne and St. Vincent's Institute of Medical Research in Australia. She continued her studies of medically relevant proteins with postdoctoral work at Uppsala University in Sweden, where she was also involved in the development of molecular graphics software for protein structural work. Her interest in expanding the application of protein crystallography led to her joining the University of Basel in Switzerland, where she succeeded in obtaining structures of integral membrane proteins.

In 1993 she joined Ciba Geigy, now Novartis, working on drug discovery projects in many different indications. She has built up considerable experience in drug discovery and is especially recognized for her expertise in kinase inhibition. Her work has resulted in the discovery of Tasigna, a drug for the treatment of Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia. She is very interested in novel approaches for target modulation, such as non-ATP site inhibitors of kinases. As head of Structural Biophysics in Novartis she is leading a group that uses protein crystallography, biomolecular NMR and other biophysical techniques to screen for and characterize the binding of ligands to targets, and to optimize these compounds in collaboration with medicinal chemists.
She has received several awards for her work including the CSR Chemicals Inc. prize for chemistry, Novartis Leading Scientist award, and the American Chemical Society Heroes of Chemistry award.

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