Matthew Fuchter

Matthew John Fuchter is a British chemist who is a professor of chemistry at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the development and application of novel functional molecular systems to a broad range of areas; from materials to medicine. He has been awarded both the Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize and the Corday–Morgan Prizes (2021) of the Royal Society of Chemistry. It was during his undergraduate degree that he first became interested in organic synthesis. As a graduate student he moved to Imperial College London, where he worked with Anthony Barrett on the synthesis and applications of porphyrazines, including as therapeutic agents. During his doctoral studies Barrett and Fuchter collaborated with Brian M. Hoffman at Northwestern University.

Research and career After completing his PhD, Fuchter moved to Australia, for postdoctoral research at CSIRO and the University of Melbourne, where he worked with Andrew Bruce Holmes. In 2007 Fuchter returned to the United Kingdom, where he began his independent academic career at the School of Pharmacy, University of London (now UCL School of Pharmacy). Fuchter develops photoswitchable molecules, chiral materials and new pharmaceuticals.

Fuchter is interested in how considerations of chirality can be applied to the development of novel approaches in chiral optoelectronic materials and devices. While he has worked on many drug targets, he has specialised in proteins involved in the transcriptional and epigenetic processes of disease. A particular interest has been the development of inhibitors for the histone-lysine methyltransferase enzymes in the Plasmodium parasite that causes human malaria.

In 2018 one of the cancer drugs developed by Fuchter, together with Anthony Barrett, Simak Ali and Charles Coombes entered a phase 1 clinical trial, and as of 2020, it is in phase 2. The drug, which was designed using computational chemistry, inhibits the cyclin-dependent kinase 7 (CDK7), a transcriptional regulatory protein that also regulates the cell cycle. Certain cancers rely on CDK7, so inhibition of this enzyme has potential to have a significant impact on cancer pathogenesis. He is an elected council member of the Royal Society of Chemistry organic division.

Awards and honours 2014 Royal Society of ChemistryHarrison-Meldola Memorial Prize 2014 Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) 2017 Imperial College London President’s Medal for Excellence in Innovation and Entrepreneurship 2018 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Established career fellowship 2020 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists 2021 Royal Society of Chemistry Corday–Morgan Prize 2022 Royal Society of Chemistry Stephanie L. Kwolek Award 2023 Royal Society of Chemistry Biological and Medicinal Chemistry Sector Malcolm Campbell Memorial Prize 2023 Elected Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts

Selected publications