Harren Jhoti co-founded Astex in 1999 and was Chief Scientific Officer until November 2007 when he was appointed Chief Executive Officer. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Cancer Research and Drug Discovery in the King’s New Year Honours in 2023. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2018, the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2016, and of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2015. In January 2018 he was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the UK BioIndustry Association (BIA). He received the Prous Institute-Overton and Meyer Award for New Technologies in Drug Discovery from the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry in 2012 and was also named by the Royal Society of Chemistry as “Chemistry World Entrepreneur of the Year” for 2007. In September 2023, Dr. Jhoti won Business Person of the Year at the 21st annual Asian Achievers Awards.

He has published widely including in leading journals such as Nature and Science, and has also been featured in TIME magazine after being named by the World Economic Forum a Technology Pioneer in 2005. He has served on the board of the BIA, the UK BioIndustry Association and currently consults for life science venture capital firms. Before founding Astex in 1999, he was head of Structural Biology and Bioinformatics at GlaxoWellcome in the United Kingdom (1991-1999). Prior to Glaxo, Dr. Jhoti was a post-doctoral scientist at Oxford University. He received a B.Sc. (Hons) in Biochemistry in 1985 and a Ph.D. in Protein Crystallography from the University of London in 1989.