Dr Tony Rush, Director of Neuroscience at Metrion, has over 25 years of experience in the ion channel field, spanning both academic research and industry. At Metrion, he leads teams working on collaborative drug discovery projects with for customers and oversees neuroscience activities across the company.

Before co-founding Metrion, Tony worked at Xention Ltd (UK), managing ion channel screening projects and developing translational pain assays in collaboration with external partners. Prior to that, he was the lead biologist on multiple hit-to-lead ion channel drug discovery programmes at AstraZeneca (Sweden), working within cross-functional teams on preclinical pain targets. Earlier in his career, Tony coordinated ion channel research contracts for biotechnology and pharmaceutical clients at NeuroSolutions Ltd (UK).

Tony completed his PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Dundee (UK), where he investigated the biophysical properties of multiple sodium channels in dissociated dorsal root ganglion neurons associated with pain transmission - research that included early work on currents now attributed to NaV1.7 and NaV1.8.

He then carried out postdoctoral research at Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), studying hippocampal synaptic plasticity, followed by a position at Yale University (USA) in the laboratory of Professor Stephen Waxman. At Yale, he worked as part of a multidisciplinary team focused on sodium channels, particularly Nav1.7, Nav1.8, and Nav1.9, and investigated the role of Nav1.7 mutations in pain disorders such as Erythromelalgia, developing novel approaches to study their impact on neuronal firing behaviour.

Tony holds a BSc (Hons) in Applied Biology from the University of Hertfordshire and has authored 32 peer-reviewed publications.