Sally John PhD

Sally John, Ph.D. is the VP of Genomics and Computational Biology at Biogen Idec, her group focuses on applying human genetics, genomics and analytical methods to support drug discovery and development, from identification of new targets through to understanding genetic variability in drug response and patient stratification. She is a passionate advocate of the value of human genetics to support early drug discovery and has founded a number of groups within industry to strengthen the application of genetics, including a human genetics group at Pfizer and the Statistical Genetics group at AstraZeneca. Her most recent position prior to Biogen Idec was Head of Clinical Genetics and Bioinformatics at Pfizer.

She gained a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Manchester, UK and held academic positions including Senior Lecturer in Genetic Epidemiology at the University of Manchester. Her academic focus of research has been in the area of inflammatory genetics, including rheumatoid arthritis, asthma and pain, and genetic epidemiology methods as applied to the analysis of complex traits. She is active in the external and pre-competitive community and has acted as the Co-Chair of the International Serious Adverse Events Consortium, an industry lead pre-competitive consortium focussing on the genetic basis of drug induced serious adverse events