Jim Staddon is a biochemist, studying at the University of Bristol, UK (BSc, PhD). He was then a visiting fellow at the NIH (USA) and then a research fellow at what is now Cancer Research UK (CRUK). He joined Eisai, a Japanese pharmaceutical company, at their, then new, London Research Laboratories. These labs moved to Hatfield, UK. He has always worked on biochemistry and molecular cell biology. Within Eisai, he has been trying to deeply understand neurodegenerative disease processes to identifying promising drug targets. He has worked on multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. Target classes have included phosphodiesterases, kinases, proteases and others. He has worked on both small molecule and biological therapies. Genetically informed targets are of high interest, providing a good human-relevant starting point for drug discovery. He is also a key member of the Eisai:UCL collaboration, which aligns Eisai’s drug discovery know-how with UCL’s neurodegenerative disease expertise.