
Andreas Bender taken by Nathan Pitt, ©University of Cambridge
Professor Andreas Bender is a recipient of the 2024 Synergy Award by the Society of Medicinal Plant and Natural Product Research.
Andreas is a Professor for Molecular Informatics at the department who uses machine learning and AI to analyse data from the life sciences. Additionally, he is Chief Technology & Informatics Officer at Pangea Bio, which is using AI to find promising molecules for transformative medicine from natural sources. His work has implications in areas like drug discovery, such as developing models that can predict which molecular compounds could cause drug-induced liver injury if used in medicine.
The 2024 Synergy Award by the Society of Medicinal Plant and Natural Product Research was awarded to Andreas on July 15. The award celebrates research on natural products for medicinal use and aimed to create awareness of research in this field.
“The work the award has been made for translated into the current company we started, Pangea Bio, which uses natural products for drug discovery and which has the first compounds going into the clinic in early 2025,” comments Andreas.
The Synergy Award press release notes: “The second GA synergy award, in 2024, has been awarded to emphasize the importance, and synergy, between computational and experimental methods in the field.”
Andreas Bender
Andreas is a Professor for Molecular Informatics at the University of Cambridge working on data analysis methods related to compound safety and efficacy, and Chief Technology & Informatics Officer (CITO) at Pangea Bio. Previously he was a Director for Digital Life Sciences at Nuvisan in Berlin, as well as as an Associate Director for Data Science and AI in the Clinical Pharmacology & Safety Sciences group at AstraZeneca.
On the entrepreneurial side, Andreas was involved in setting up Healx Ltd (for data-driven drug repurposing) and PharmEnable Ltd (for designing novel chemistry for targets that are difficult to drug conventially), both based in Cambridge/UK. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and worked in the Lead Discovery Informatics group at Novartis in Cambridge/MA as well as at Leiden University in the Netherlands before his current post.