Dr Sarah Skerratt | 2021 Creativity in Industry Prize winner

Dr Sarah Skerratt FRSC

Winner: 2021 Creativity in Industry Prize

MSD

For innovation in aspects of medicinal chemistry and strategic leadership in drug discovery method development.

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The promise of personalised medicines I think will come to fruition, giving patients options that are tailored to their particular needs.

Diseases are often caused by proteins in the body that are not functioning in the way that they should. Once the proteins that are causing disease are identified, Dr Skerratt works with a team of scientists that design and synthesise molecules that seek to restore normal function or 'switch off' the effects of the protein that is causing unwanted effects. This is a painstaking process, requiring innovation and resilience, and involves scientists from many different backgrounds working together.

Sarah works with her team at the London Discovery Centre to deliver therapies to patients that are safe and effective and make a real difference to people’s lives.

Read winner biography

Sarah is an organic chemist by training, conducting her PhD with Professor J C Anderson at the University of Nottingham before undertaking postdoctoral studies with Professor P A Wender at Stanford University as a visiting Fulbright Scholar. Sarah began her industrial career as a medicinal chemist at Pfizer, UK and has subsequently taken on roles at Convergence and Vertex. She is an active member of the UK 91AV community, with a long-standing interest in teaching and enabling the next generation of scientists. Sarah is currently the head of the MSD UK 91AV at MSD’s London Discovery Centre.

Since joining the pharmaceutical industry as a drug discovery scientist, Sarah has championed the use of technology and computational methods to accelerate the rate at which new medicines get to market, particularly in the Design, Make, Test, Analyse (DMTA) phase of drug discovery. Sarah has taken a leading role in delivering integrated, computationally enabled, molecular design and analysis workflows in the organisations she has worked within, enabling teams to realise step changes in efficiency, innovation and data-driven decision making. Sarah also champions the use of AI/ML methods to drive molecular design, ensuring molecules with the highest probability of success are selected for synthesis.

Sarah recognises the central importance of synthetic chemistry in drug discovery and has led initiatives to expand chemical space in design and championed the democratisation of high-throughput experimentation and automation technologies. She has delivered multiple drug discovery courses for students throughout the UK/EU and shared her experiences of life in pharma with a view to inspiring and educating early stage career scientists.

Q+A

Who or what has inspired you?

There have been many role models and mentors that have inspired me over the years. My PhD supervisor inspired me to keep on learning, never give up, and have fun! Working at Pfizer in the earlier part of my career, I was fortunate to learn and be inspired by many great scientists and leaders. I have also been fortunate enough to work with the team at Convergence who showed real entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to treat chronic pain. Working at Vertex, I was inspired by the razor-sharp focus on the patient, and the amazing work done by the CF team to the deliver those much-needed therapies. Now at MSD there is much to be inspired by: the scientists I have met across the R&D sites, the mission to treat patients, the collaborative spirit across the organisation and the team we are building at the London site. Walking into the Francis Crick Institute in London’s Knowledge Quarter every morning inspires me also – it’s an amazingly vibrant place!

What advice would you give to a young person considering a career in chemistry?

A career in chemistry is exciting, challenging and rewarding, and enables you to apply your skills to solving complex problems that can benefit society. One thing I learnt early on is to not be disheartened by failure: instead, learn from it. In drug discovery, things don’t always work out (the compound you have been working on doesn’t make it through key studies, the biological target doesn’t deliver the predicted level of efficacy etc), but don’t give up, failures always provide information that you can use to make a better molecule or drug targets/pathways in a different way.

Can you tell us about a scientific development on the horizon that you are excited about?

It’s an exciting time to be a drug discovery scientist. Pharma and biotech companies are more collaborative and outward-facing than ever before, working together and/or with academia to try and solve really difficult scientific problems. There have been so many advances in our understanding of human disease biology, genetics, and how to best modulate a target to deliver a clinically relevant phenotype over recent years, with new and exciting discoveries happening at an ever-increasing pace. I feel we are better equipped than ever to be able to tackle really difficult disease areas and bring through medicines for the patients who are in dire need of them. More than ever before we are able to work at the interface of biology, chemistry, physics and technology to solve really difficult problems, for example, the advances in bioimaging and the use of big data and machine learning to predict which biological pathways may be most disease-relevant. The promise of personalised medicines I think will come to fruition, giving patients options that are tailored to their particular needs. Within chemistry, we are thinking in a much more 'modality–agonistic' way and looking for the best ways to design and synthesise molecules of all sizes from the very small to the very large that modulate disease biology at the DNA, RNA or protein level.

What has been a highlight for you (either personally or in your career)?

I have been fortunate enough to work on some amazing project teams in which we have taken molecules through to the clinic. Being able to develop and enable my teams is something I am passionate about, and I love seeing talented scientists grow and advance in their careers. I also think that having taken on leadership positions/roles that have initially felt out of my comfort zone is something I feel proud of.

What has been a challenge for you (either personally or in your career)?

I think juggling a career with having children is something that can be a challenge. There can be guilt and uncertainty when you become a parent that you are not doing a good job on any front. However, as a parent, it’s important to not be too hard on yourself. There are times when you can have it all, and times when you can’t. Working on exciting science with great people inspires me and has gotten me through the times I have felt slightly sleep-deprived. Having some great managers/mentors along the way has been crucial. It’s still, and always will be, a juggling act; sometimes the plates will all be spinning as planned, sometimes they won’t!

Why do you think teamwork is important in science?

Drug discovery is a team-sport! Only by working in a multidisciplinary team will you have the expertise and know-how to get an initial biological hypothesis through to a safe and efficacious medicine to treat patients. Working this way is also fun, and a great way of learning more about the science (and art) of drug discovery.