SGC Scientific Committee

Dr. Tony Pawson

Anthony Pawson received an MA in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge, England. He did his graduate training at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London, working with Alan Smith on the expression of retroviral gene products, and received his Ph.D. in 1976 from King's College, University of London. From 1976-1980 he pursued postdoctoral work at the University of California at Berkeley, with Peter Duesberg and Steven Martin, investigating the biochemical functions of retroviral oncogenes and their role in neoplastic cell transformation. In 1981, he took up a position as an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia, and in 1985 moved to the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto. Currently, Dr. Pawson is the Director of Research, Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital. He is a Professor in the Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics at the University of Toronto, and a University Professor of the University of Toronto. Dr. Pawson is a Distinguished Scientist of the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, holds the Apotex Chair in Molecular Oncology, and is an International Research Scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Dr. Brett Finlay

Dr. Brett Finlay is a Professor in the Michael Smith Laboratories, and the Departments of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Microbiology and Immunology at the University of British Columbia. He obtained a B.Sc. (Honors) in Biochemistry at the University of Alberta, where he also did his Ph.D. (1986) in Biochemistry under Dr. William Paranchych, studying F-like plasmid conjugation. His post-doctoral studies were performed with Dr. Stanley Falkow at the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine, where he studied Salmonella invasion into host cells. In 1989, he joined UBC as an Assistant Professor in the Biotechnology Laboratory. Dr. Finlay’s research interests are focussed on host-pathogen interactions, at the molecular level. By combining cell biology with microbiology, he has been at the forefront of the emerging field called Cellular Microbiology, making several fundamental discoveries in this field, and publishing over 250 papers. His laboratory studies several pathogenic bacteria, with Salmonella and pathogenic E. coli interactions with host cells being the primary focus. He is well recognized internationally for his work, and has won several prestigious awards including the E.W.R. Steacie Prize, the CSM Fisher Scientific Award, a MRC Scientist, five Howard Hughes International Research Scholar Awards, a CIHR Distinguished Investigator, BC Biotech Innovation Award, the Michael Smith Health Research Prize, the IDSA Squibb award, the Jacob Biely Prize, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and is the UBC Peter Wall Distinguished Professor. He is a cofounder of Inimex Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Director of the SARS Accelerated Vaccine Initiative. He also serves on several editorial and advisory boards, and is a strong supporter of communicating science to the public.

Dr. Tom Hudson

Dr. Hudson is President and Scientific Director of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. His scientific interests are in human genetic diseases and the dissection of complex genetic diseases. Dr. Hudson was the founder and Director of the McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre and Assistant-Director of the Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome Research. At the Whitehead Institute, Dr. Hudson led the effort to generate dense physical and gene maps of the human and mouse genomes. Dr. Hudson and his team were also founding members of the International Haplotype Map Consortium. Dr. Hudson is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Human Genetics.

The recipient of numerous awards, including the 2005 Award for Research in Immunology by the Canadian Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology, the André-Dupont 2002 Young Investigator Award given by Quebec’s Clinical Research Club, an Investigator Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, a Burroughs-Wellcome Clinician-Scientist Award, The 2002 Prix de la Santé from the Armand-Frappier Foundation and the 2001 Young Scientist Award by the Genetics Society of Canada.

Dr. Stephen Frye

After obtaining a BS in Chemistry at North Carolina State University in 1983 Stephen joined the laboratory of Prof Ernest Eliel at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. His research at UNC focused on asymmetric synthesis and included an off-campus research fellowship in Lausanne, Switzerland to investigate mechanisms of stereoselective organometallic reactions via NMR kinetics. Upon completing his Ph.D in 1987, Stephen began his professional career as a medicinal chemist at the newly initiated US research site for Glaxo - at that time located in temporary facilities in Venable Hall. He subsequently led the project that resulted in Avodart, GSK’s dual 5-reductase inhibitor for treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia and currently under investigation for the prevention of prostate cancer. Shortly after the merger with Wellcome in 1995, Stephen established a new chemistry department in RTP based upon kinase target class science and GSK’s kinase inhibitors Tykerb (a dual erbB2/EGFR inhibitor approved for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer) and Pazopanib (in Phase III trials for renal carcinoma) were discovered within this department. In 1999 Stephen began a secondment at GW’s Stevenage site in the UK leading a research unit in medicinal chemistry. Following the merger with GSK in the spring of 2000, he was selected to lead GSK’s High Throughput Chemistry group that evolved into Discovery Medicinal Chemistry (DMC). Over the seven years he led DMC, the group grew to more than 200 chemists and developed global target-class chemical science and a compound collection strategy that enhanced both the productivity and quality of GSK’s hit and lead generation across all therapeutic areas.

Dr. Lisa Shewchuk

Lisa Shewchuk is currently the Section Head of the Structural Sciences Department within Molecular Discovery Research at GlaxoSmithKline in RTP. Her department is responsible for determining the 3-dimensional structures of proteins complexed with drug-like molecules at atomic resolution. Over the past 10 years, her department has had a strong focus on kinases and nuclear receptors solving more than 20 different members for each of these families.

Lisa joined Glaxo as a crystallographer in 1993, after receiving a PhD. in biochemistry with Prof Christopher Walsh at Harvard Medical School and completing a post doc in protein crystallography with Prof Brian Matthews at the University of Oregon. She received her bachelors degree in chemistry from the University of Alberta.

Dr. Kirk Clark

Kirk Clark is the Head of the Protein Structure Group at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR). The Protein Structure Group supports drug discovery research projects at NIBR’s Cambridge, Massachusetts site. His research team fully integrates protein production, x-ray crystallography, and NMR in a “gene to structure” process. The resulting atomic resolution data is incorporated into the design efforts of the medicinal chemistry groups.

Kirk earned his Ph.D in Biochemistry at Kansas State University. His research encompassed both protein chemistry/biophysics and the development of software for performing sequence alignments. Kirk was trained in protein crystallography as an HHMI post-doctoral fellow at The Rockefeller University. His research focused on DNA binding domains of transcription factors. Kirk entered the pharmaceutical world in 1994 by taking a position with Ciba-Geigy Corporation to establish a protein crystallography lab at their New Jersey site.

Dr. Mike Ferguson

Michael Ferguson obtained a BSc in Biochemistry at The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (1979) and a PhD in Biochemistry (1982) at London University. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Rockefeller University, New York, with George Cross, FRS (1982-1985) and at Oxford University with Raymond Dwek, FRS (1985-1988). He took up a lectureship at The University of Dundee in 1988 and was promoted to a personal chair in Molecular Parasitology in 1994. He received the 1991 Colworth Medal of the British Biochemical Society, the 1996 Makdougall Brisbane Prize of The Royal Society of Edinburgh, the 1999 International Glycoconjugate Organisation Award and the 2006 Wright Medal of The British Society for Parasitology. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1994), the Royal Society of London (2000) and the Academy of Medical Sciences (2007) and made a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (1999).

Michael Ferguson has published over 200 peer reviewed research papers and is known for solving the first structures of glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) membrane anchors.

His research takes a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the biochemistry and glycobiology of protozoan parasites that cause tropical diseases, particularly the trypanosomatids that cause African Sleeping Sickness, Chagas’ disease and leishmaniasis. He believes in the fundamental importance of working across the Biology / Chemistry interface and he has published on and the design and synthesis of potential drug-leads against tropical diseases. He is particularly interested in Translational Research and, together with his colleagues, was instrumental in establishing the new Drug Discovery Unit at the University of Dundee. He is also Director of the Dundee Proteomics Facility and is intimately involved with the Wyeth/Scottish Enterprise Translational Medicine Research Collaboration (TMRC).

Dr. Calle Heldin

Professor Calle Heldin is Director at The Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Uppsala (since 1986) and Professor in Molecular Cell Biology at Uppsala University (since 1992). He has received a number of academic honours and awards, among them the Anders Jahre’s Medical Price for Younger Scientists from the University of Oslo in 1986 and K. Fernstrøms Large Medical Price for Nordic Scientists from The Medical Faculty, University of Lund in 1993. Professor Heldin has served on a number of scientific advisory and grant committees. He is presently serving on a number of international editorial boards. Professor Calle Heldin has published 315 research papers in peer-reviewed journals and 156 review articles.

Dr. Paul Darke

Dr. Paul Darke is a Distinguished Senior Investigator at Merck Research Laboratories in West Point, Pennsylvania. His research, on high-throughput molecular biology platforms for the facile expression of soluble and easily-purified proteins of therapeutic interest, has led to the completion of the entire human kinome. He also has worked extensively on the structure-activity relationships of enzymes and potential drug targeted proteins. Dr. Darke has been cited on more than 50 peer-reviewed papers and holds 3 patents for his research protocols.

In 1985, Dr. Darke joined Merck as a Senior Research Microbiologist after earning a PhD. in Chemistry at University of California San Diego and completing a NIH Fellowship with Dr. Stephen J. Benkovic at Pennsylvania State University.

Dr. Thomas C. Terwilliger

Bioscience Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Dr. David Stuart

The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics and Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford