Rachel Grimley PhD

Rachel is Executive Director and Head of Mechanistic Biology & Profiling at AstraZeneca, with global responsibility for in vitro mechanism of action studies, SAR biology profiling, and pre-clinical safety profiling. Prior to joining the industry, she gained her PhD in Enzymology from the University of Birmingham and completed post-doctoral studies at the University of Oxford. Rachel has 20 years’ experience in target identification, reagent generation, assay development, profiling and mechanism of action studies across a number of companies. Prior to joining AstraZeneca in 2015, Rachel led the Exploratory Epigenetics Team at Pfizer Neusentis in Cambridge where she held accountable for developing and implementing a strategy to define the role of epigenetics in the onset and maintenance of chronic pain, and for the subsequent characterization of epigenetic proteins as novel drug targets for pain and sensory disorders. Previously, Rachel held roles of increasing responsibility at Pfizer in Sandwich and then GlaxoSmithKline in Stevenage.