Stephen Jackson

In 2011 Jackson founded MISSION Therapeutics a firm to develop drugs to improve the management of life-threatening diseases, particularly cancer. In 2017, Steve founded Adrestia Therapeutics Ltd and currently serves as Chief Executive and Chief Scientific Officer.

Jackson's work has provided key insights into cellular processes that respond to DNA damage; processes fundamental to life and whose defects cause various diseases particularly cancer. Through his discovery that the DNA-dependent protein kinase (DNA-PK) enzyme is activated by DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs), Jackson's laboratory identified and characterised various components of the non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) system that repairs most DSBs in human cells. These studies also provided a paradigm for Jackson's later work on DNA-damage signalling by the ATM serine/threonine kinase and ATR (Ataxia telangiectasia and Rad3 related), and his studies on how these and additional DNA repair factors interact with and influence one another, often in ways regulated by post-translational modifications. Jackson's work has also helped establish how DSB repair is controlled during the cell cycle, at telomeres in response to cell aging/senescence, and within chromatin. In 1997 Jackson founded KuDOS Pharmaceuticals with the aim of translating knowledge of DNA damage response pathways into new treatments for cancer. KuDOS developed small-molecule inhibitors of several DNA damage response enzymes. The most advanced of these is the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase 1 (PARP1) inhibitor Olaparib/Lynparza™, which is now a registered medicine worldwide. KuDOS developed into a fully integrated drug-discovery and drug-development company and was acquired by AstraZeneca in 2005.

Jackson has received numerous awards, medals and honorary degrees: the inaugural Eppendorf-Nature European Young Investigator Award (1995); the Tenovus Medal for Cancer Research (1997); the Colworth Medal (1997); the Anthony Dipple Carcinogenesis Young Investigator award (2002); the Biochemical Society GlaxoSmithKline Award (2008); the BBSRC Innovator of the Year Award (2009); the Royal Society Buchanan Medal (2011), the latter in recognition of his "outstanding contributions to understanding DNA repair and DNA damage response signalling pathways", and the Gagna A. & Ch. Van Heck Prize (2015) for "his cardinal contributions related to cellular events that detect, signal the presence of and repair DNA damages". Jackson is the co-winner of the King Faisal International Prize for Science 2016, in recognition of his "outstanding contribution to defining the link between the basic mechanism of genomic DNA instability and its relationship to cancer. Specifically, he unraveled the salient components of the pathway involved in DNA repair. He is also credited with an innovative approach to bring his findings into tangible therapeutic products to treat cancer". He was elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 1997, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2001 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2008. In 2016 Jackson was awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Medicine for his "fundamental research into DNA repair in human cells and for the successful application of knowledge of that process in the development of new cancer drugs". In 2017 he was awarded the Genome Stability Network medal for his contributions to the field of genome stability and particularly for the realisation of the therapeutic potential of targeting the DDR. The Fondation ARC's Leopold Griffuel Prize in Translational and Clinical Research was presented to Jackson in 2019 for his work on DNA damage repair and his role in the development of medicines such as PARP1 and 2 inhibitors, currently used for cancer treatment.

Following his PhD, Jackson carried out postdoctoral research with Robert Tjian at the University of California, Berkeley, where he developed an interest in the regulation of transcription. He returned to the UK in 1991 as a Junior Group Leader at the then Wellcome-CRC Institute, now the Gurdon Institute.

Professor Jackson was educated at the University of Leeds, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry in 1983. He then carried out his PhD research working with Jean Beggs on yeast RNA splicing at Imperial College London and Edinburgh University, earning his PhD in 1987.

Stephen Philip Jackson, FRS, FMedSci, (born 17 July 1962) is the Frederick James Quick Professor of Biology. He is a Senior Group Leader and Head of Cancer Research UK Laboratories at the Gurdon Institute.