For comprehensive school-educated Andrew Leach, the path to finding life-saving cancer treatments and building a business that spans the Atlantic began with a single, transformative step across the ocean.
When Dr Leach boarded a flight to Los Angeles in the autumn of 2000, he did so with modest expectations. He viewed his upcoming AstraZeneca-funded Fulbright Fellowship at UCLA as an interesting laboratory assignment — a twelve-month stint of useful technical work rather than the ensuing American enlightenment.
"I went expecting to stay for a year or so of pure lab work." Interviewed by Afua Osei at the Commission, Andrew laughs today how twelve months stretched into two years, and much later, clients in key American markets. It sparked a profound "180-degree change" in his worldview. “Now, I’m always the first to correct people when they make dismissive comments about the US. It is an extraordinarily energetic, ambitious, and remarkable place.” Two decades later, Andrew is a research academic at the University of Manchester, and one of the Astra-Zeneca co-inventors of TruCap (capivasertib)—a targeted cancer therapeutic recently approved for breast cancer and, just last week, for prostate cancer, and additionally, he is the entrepreneurial co-founder of a thriving, 12-person computational chemistry hi-tech company located in Macclesfield, a town 12 miles South of Manchester, generating business in the biotech clusters of the US.
Witnessing History: LA in the Early 2000s
Arriving for his UCLA Fulbright-Astra Zeneca Fellowship in 2000 placed Andrew on the front row of a momentous era in American history. He witnessed the razor-thin transition between the Clinton and Bush administrations. "One of Al Gore's last campaign stops was right by campus in Westwood Village," he recalls. "All of Hollywood's A-listers came out to campaign for him."
But the defining, shattering moment of his fellowship came on September 11, 2001. "In California, it was six in the morning when the first plane hit," Andrew says. "By the time we woke up, it was old news. I turned on the radio and heard them listing off the number of planes currently in the air. It was a very confused, scary time." A few days later, UCLA held a campus-wide vigil. It is a memory that remains physically etched in Andrew's mind. "It’s one of the very few occasions in my life where the atmosphere felt physical, solid. There was a real, powerful desire for people to look out for one another and hold together."
Amidst the heavy geopolitical landscape, Fulbright also provided moments of unexpected connection. Through local organizers, Andrew and a group of fellow Fulbrighters found themselves invited to an intimate breakfast hosted by First Lady Laura Bush as part of her national childhood literacy campaign. "If it wasn't for Fulbright, I wouldn't have had any reason or opportunity to be in a room like that," he notes.
The Sestrian and the City of Angels
Andrew is a proud Sestrian—the historical term for a native of Chester, a quaint, Roman-walled medieval city near the Welsh border. "I used to put 'Andrew Leach is a Sestrian' in my journal biography bylines, which used to infuriate my supervisor in the US because no one knew what it meant," Andrew chuckles. "I liked the mystery of it."
Going from a medieval town where families stay for generations to the sprawling, hyper-modern metropolis of Los Angeles was jarring. "I don’t think many people feel like they 'belong' in LA," Andrew observes, “but that is the great joy of it” noting the exhilarating contrasts between the City of Angels and medieval Chester.
Yet, Andrew found his own unique pocket of community by bringing his tenor horn across the Atlantic and joining the Golden State British Brass Band. Through the band, he met rare, third-generation Angelenos who showed him a side of the city tourists never see. "LA is an amazing, diverse city. If you ever get the chance to live there, absolutely grab it."
Coaxed Out of the Darkened Room
Andrew admits he could have easily spent his entire fellowship hiding away. "It’s a bit of a cliché, but computational chemists have a stereotype of sitting in darkened rooms and never venturing out. There’s a little bit of truth in that."
What dragged him into the light was the legendary Southern California Fulbright Association regional coordinator. A formidable woman with a deeply moving personal history—her husband, the former president of the American University of Beirut, had been tragically assassinated during the Lebanese Civil War—she dedicated her life to building international bridges. (Her son, Steve Kerr, would also go on to become a famous NBA star with the Chicago Bulls and Golden State Warriors). "She was one of the most remarkable people I have ever met," Andrew says warmly. "She would have us over to her beautiful home in the Pacific Palisades—which sadly burned down in the wildfires last year—and introduce us to everyone. She arranged for us to meet the editorial board of the LA Times, took us to the opera, and dragged us to Downtown LA before it was trendy. Having someone facilitate those conversations was completely transformative. It made me realize that Fulbright isn’t just about the funding; it’s about the incredible network of human beings they put around you"
In the lab of UCLA chemist Ken Houk, Andrew’s scientific perspective shifted just as radically. Ken got Andrew involved in a project looking at how biological molecules interact rather than just react. "That was only a short step from thinking about molecules as potential drugs." Furthermore, Andrew found himself surrounded by an energetic, entrepreneurial culture that simply didn't exist in British academia at the time. "At UCLA, people transitioned seamlessly between the university and industry. They planted the seeds of commercial mindedness in my head."
From the Drawing Board to the Clinic
Upon returning to the UK, Andrew reached out to the US-UK Fulbright Commission’s Astra-Zeneca contact at its former Macclesfield HQ. What he hoped would be a simple presentation to say "thank you" quickly turned into a job offer.
In 2006, working within AstraZeneca's oncology division, Andrew and his colleagues began designing a molecule to target specific pathways in cancer cells. That molecule eventually became TruCap (capivasertib).
"It is completely mind-blowing. When you write down a molecular structure on a piece of paper, you are creating something that has likely never existed in the entire history of the universe. To go from that sketch to a physical molecule made in a lab, to clinical trials, to finally knowing it is out there improving and extending the lives of cancer patients—it’s an astonishing privilege," Andrew says. "The time scale is astonishing. I started working on that project in 2006. It was approved for breast cancer in 2024, and literally just last week, it was approved in the US for prostate cancer. I think I’m the only inventor on the patent who is still of working age; the rest have long retired."
In 2012, during a wave of restructuring at AstraZeneca, Andrew and two colleagues decided to take a leap of faith. Armed with their voluntary redundancy payouts and a proprietary data analysis method they had developed, they founded a spin-out computational chemistry company. “It’s been an incredible learning experience. When you're in a massive organization, you have enormous resources, but you're a small part of a giant machine. In a small company, there is a very real, healthy pressure. You realize very quickly that the money to pay your team's salaries at the end of the month doesn't just appear out of thin air—it relies entirely on your science being good enough that people are willing to pay for it. We’ve gone from three founders working out of our spare bedrooms to a beautiful office space in Macclesfield with twelve employees doing high-level scientific research. The human aspect of it—enabling brilliant scientists to do great work and building deep, decades-long relationships with my co-founders—has been the most rewarding part of the journey.”
Today, fourteen years later, his company is actively hiring and serves a global client base—primarily concentrated in the biotechnology hubs of Greater Boston and California. "I would have found navigating the US biotech market incredibly daunting if I hadn't had that Fulbright experience," Andrew reflects. "But because of my time at UCLA, the transatlantic nature of our business doesn't faze me at all. It gave me a comfort level with the US that a working-class kid from a UK comprehensive school otherwise would have struggled to find."
As Andrew reflected on the future, he shared, “I don’t think I’m done yet! Alongside the company, I’m a professor at the University of Manchester. My academic group has spent the last few years developing a brand-new computational method to analyse how molecules interact with proteins. It has incredible potential applications—not just in drug discovery, but in agrochemical design and engineering designer enzymes. We're currently working on getting that research published, and once it's out there in a state where others can use it, I’d love to build new collaborations and perhaps spin that technology out into another venture. There is still plenty of science left to do!”
*Interviewed by Afua Osei, Director of External Relations, US-UK Fulbright Commission.