Biography

Craig J. Thomas, Ph.D., is a senior scientist for the Precision Therapeutics and Translational Technologies (PT3) program in the Chemical Genomics Branch of NCATS’ Division of Preclinical Innovation. The PT3 program engages in a wide range of research activities using state-of-the-art methods from various areas to achieve specific goals. These areas include disease model development/characterization, high-throughput screening, medicinal chemistry/chemical biology and treatment development. The PT3 team performs research in three domains: (1) small molecule discovery, (2) drug repositioning and drug combination discovery, and (3) precision medicine.

Thomas also is an adjunct investigator in the Lymphoid Malignancies Branch within the Chemical Biology Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute. He serves on the editorial boards of Scientific Data and ACS Pharmacology & Translational Sciences. He is an adjunct associate professor at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. He also is a lecturer for NIH’s Principles of Clinical Pharmacology course. Thomas has published more than 250 peer-reviewed manuscripts, is an inventor on more than 25 patents and has given numerous invited lectures.

Before joining NCATS in 2011, Thomas was a team leader at the NIH Chemical Genomics Center. The center was supported by the National Human Genome Research Institute. He came to NIH in 2003 and was the director of the Chemical Biology Core at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Thomas earned his B.S. from the University of Indianapolis and his Ph.D. from Syracuse University. He completed postdoctoral work in the laboratories of Sidney Hecht at the University of Virginia, where he earned a fellowship through the American Cancer Society.

Research Topics

Thomas uses high-throughput screening tools to make discoveries at the interface of chemistry and biology. His interests include the developing new screening libraries, biologically active small molecules, and drug combinations. He also is interested in the association of phenotype to pharmacology, the phenotypic screening of mechanistically annotated small molecule libraries, and the progression of agents into advanced preclinical and clinical studies.