Cheryl Arrowsmith

Dr. Cheryl Arrowsmith is Chief Scientist at the University of Toronto’s Structural Genomics Consortium, a multinational public-private initiative to discover new medicines through protein-based open-access research. Arrowsmith is also a Professor of Medical Biophysics, Senior Scientist with the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, and a world expert in cancer-related structural biology and chemical biology and epigenetics. Born in 1959 in Hackensack, New Jersey, she completed a Bachelor of Science at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, relocated to Toronto, and was awarded her PhD in chemistry from the University of Toronto in 1987. Arrowsmith spent the next five years as a post-doctoral research fellow at Stanford University. Co-founder of Affinium Pharmaceuticals, whose anti-Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus antibiotic is succeeding in drug trials, Arrowsmith’s current research focuses on the structural and chemical biology of chromatin and epigenetic regulatory factors related to cancer. She has served on numerous prestigious boards and review panels, including the Academic Drug Discovery Consortium.

“I was always interested in science, and I wanted to help make a difference with what I do.”