Philip Jones, Ph.D.
Institute for Applied Cancer Science (IACS)
About Dr. Jones
Philip Jones, Ph.D., is a drug hunter that leads a multi-disciplinary team of scientists whose mission is to identify the next generation of cancer medicines, move those into clinical trials and hopefully into clinical practice. Developing medicines is a challenging process, and engineering all the necessary properties for a single molecule to be effective in patients requires collaboration and team work across many disciplines. Jones is fortunate to work with a high-performance team, who has already delivered a drug into trials at MD Anderson since its inception. His team also has a number of promising programs coming along behind.
Affiliations and Related Links
Fighting Cancer: It's Personal
What makes your fight against cancer personal?
I take pride in having developed the PARP inhibitor niraparib, and still remember the loved one of one of the first patients treated with the drug blogging that their partner was responding to treatment and encouraging other people to join the clinical trial. That day was special, and showed me that what we do really counts. I want to do that all over again.
What motivates and excites you?
It's exciting that the medicines we're developing have the potential to dramatically impact the survival of our patients and one day change their lives. Having been in the fortunate position to see two drugs make it successfully to the market place, I want to do the same all over again here at MD Anderson - and I know the team here is capable of doing that.
What's your Moon Shot focus?
Our singular goal is to provide our physician scientists and their patients access to novel therapies that shut down key pathways driving disease.
What do you hope to accomplish?
I hope that at least one of the molecules developed by the team at the Institute for Applied Cancer Science (IACS) makes it all the way through clinical development and becomes an approved therapy to treat distinct cancer patients across the planet. In doing this, I hope that the collaborative drug discovery work between the IACS team and the physician scientists across MD Anderson becomes the standard for more effectively moving medicines through clinical development.
What makes the Moon Shots Program stand out?
The program is unique because there's nothing like it anywhere else in the world. The breadth and depth of the Moon Shot Program™ are truly unprecedented.
What else do you want people to know about you and your work?
What I do wouldn't be possible without the incredibly talented teams that work at IACS and TRACTION. It's the hard work of those individuals that really make things happen. I've been fortunate enough to hire world-class scientists in each of the necessary disciplines, and the team spirit across the group is phenomenal.