Dr Tony Wood
Chief Scientific Officer
Tony Wood, GSK’s Chief Scientific Officer since 2022, leads all Research and Development activities across GSK’s portfolio and pipeline, with a specific focus on driving delivering of new, innovative medicines and vaccines that bring transformative impact for patients in areas of high unmet need. He leads a global organisation focused across four core therapeutic areas (infectious disease, HIV, respiratory/immunology, and oncology) and driven by three R&D priorities – Execution, Technology and Culture – all central to developing an R&D approach based on science of the immune system, human genetics and advanced technologies, notably building ground-breaking in-house capabilities in functional genomics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as through focused business development or partnering.
Tony is one of the world’s pre-eminent medicinal chemists and has the rare distinction of inventing one of the first mammalian host protein-targeted anti-HIV drugs to reach the market. As a pioneer of structure-based drug design to overcome problems of resistance, he has striven to advance strategies in medicinal chemistry design, including ligand efficiency and lipophilic efficiency, structural-property relationships for toxicity, and the use of chemoinformatics to inform molecule and library design.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Tony has a BSc in chemistry and a PhD in organic synthesis from Newcastle University.
There’s never been a time when science and technology have formed such a powerful union as they do now. We’re able to identify drug targets using genomics and AI/ML in a way that is unprecedented. We are also able to use more approaches than ever before to design new vaccines and medicines to address the root cause of disease.
Tony's achievements
2025
Elected a Fellow of The Royal Society. This honour recognises his significant contributions to science and his use of cutting-edge technology in the discovery and development of much needed medicines and vaccines that benefit patients around the world.
2022
Named Chief Scientific Officer of GSK. Leads a team focused on three R&D priorities – Execution, Technology and Culture – all central to developing an approach focused on the science of the immune system and the use of new platform and data technologies.
2017 – 2022
Joined GSK as Senior Vice President, Medicinal Science and Technology, responsible for all science and technology platforms supporting the discovery, clinical development and delivery of new medicines across GSK. Pivotally involved in the launch of new medicines across our key therapeutic areas.
2018
Elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences
1992 – 2017
Pfizer
Led large-scale global organisations in drug discovery and development in multiple therapeutic areas, including immunology, oncology and infectious diseases.
2005 – 2010
Recipient of several awards for his work on and invention of an HIV antiviral medicine. This includes the Malcolm Campbell Award for Medicinal Chemistry from the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2005. In 2008, the Scripp Award for Best New Drug, the Prix Galien Best Pharmaceutical Agent award and the ACS Heroes of Chemistry Award. Then in 2010,of the Discoverer’s Award, PhRMA’s highest honor and the UCB Ehrlich Award for Medicinal Chemistry from the European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry.
