Rate My Professor David Spring

Professor David Spring is Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology in the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College. He received his BA (Hons) and MA in Chemistry in 1995 and DPhil in 1998 from the University of Oxford, where his doctoral thesis focused on the proposed biosynthesis of the manzamine alkaloids under the supervision of Sir Jack Baldwin. He then carried out postdoctoral research from 1999 to 2001 at Harvard University with Professor Stuart L. Schreiber as a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellow and Fulbright Scholar. In 2001, Spring joined the University of Cambridge on a BBSRC David Phillips Fellowship, which he held until 2006. This was followed by an EPSRC Advanced Fellowship from 2006 to 2011 and an EPSRC Established Career Fellowship from 2012 to 2020. His career appointments at Cambridge include Lecturer in 2006, Senior Lecturer in 2008, Reader in 2011, and Professor in 2013.

The research in Spring's laboratory originates from a desire to understand and exploit biological systems using organic synthesis. Particular interests encompass diversity-oriented synthesis, chemical genetics and epigenetics, antibiotics, and cancer. Active areas include biotherapeutics, peptides, synthetic methodology, antibiotics, and spin-outs. He received the 2023 Outstanding Supervisor Award from the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, which recognizes excellence in PhD student supervision and provides £1000 for his research group. Key publications include "Cleavable linkers in antibody–drug conjugates" (Bargh et al., Chemical Society Reviews, 2019), "Diversity-oriented synthesis as a tool for the discovery of novel biologically active small molecules" (various authors, multiple years), "β-Lactamase cleavable antimicrobial peptide-drug conjugates" (Deingruber et al., Chemical Science, 2025), and "MMP-Cleavable Linker Platform for Tumour-Responsive Homo- and Heterobivalent Antibody-Drug Conjugates" (Counsell et al., Chemical Science, 2025). Spring's contributions have advanced chemical biology and drug discovery through innovative synthetic approaches to biologically relevant molecules.