my-server
← Wiki

Department of Pharmacology, University of Oxford

The Department of Pharmacology is an academic department of the Medical Sciences Division at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England, United Kingdom.

It focuses on basic life sciences research, undergraduate teaching for medical and biomedical sciences students and training and development of graduate students. The building is located on Mansfield Road.

History

In Oxford the Botanic Garden was founded in 1621 to grow plants for medicinal use and research. Teaching of 'Chemical Pharmacology' by chemist James Ernest Marsh FRS was taking place as early as 1890 in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

The Department of Pharmacology was founded in 1898 with the appointment of Dr William John Smith Jerome as a 'Lecturer on Medical Pharmacology and Materia Medica'<nowiki />. Smith Jerome delivered an introductory lecture for a public audience in the museum on 'Pharmacology: its Aims and Methods' published in The Lancet.

1898-1908 - 1st lecturer

William John Smith Jerome (1839-1929) taught pharmacology for a decade while carrying out research into the formation of uric acid and the development of gout He had previously established the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, and had been a curator of a pathology museum in Melbourne, a lecturer in Botany in Charing Cross Hospital and carried out research in Germany with papers published in the between 1883-1895. A report on teaching medicine in Oxford in the British Medical Journal in 1906 described Smith Jerome as an excellent teacher but that he was teaching in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in an "out-house in the Museum ground" with inadequate facilities. In 1908 Smith Jerome resigned and moved to Italy. He published a paper on the physiological action for an Italian method for treating respiratory infections through salt inhalation.

1912-1937 - 1st statutory chair

James Andrew Gunn (1882-1958) was appointed Reader in Pharmacology in 1912 to a newly refurbished space for teaching and research in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. He had gained five degrees in the University of Edinburgh, and in 1917 he was made the first Professor of Pharmacology in Oxford. During WWI he served in the R.A.M.C. Following an endowment from the Sir William Dunn Trustees for a new building for pathology in 1927, Gunn proposed using the vacated pathology building in South Parks Road for pharmacology. Gunn's proposal was supported with funding to refurbish the building with teaching and research facilities, and to expand the departmental library.

In 1931 Gunn initiated the creation of the British Pharmacological Society with a letter signed with Sir Henry Dale and Dr. Walter E. Dixon. The first meeting took place in Oxford on Friday 3 July 1931 with papers being given the following day in the Department of Pharmacology. Gunn's research included investigating the actions of compounds related to adrenaline, and on alkaloids of Peganum harmala.

1937-1959 - 2nd statutory chair

Prior to Oxford, Joshua Harold Burn FRS (1892-1981) worked with Sir Henry Hallett Dale and then became director of the Pharmacological Laboratories at the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. On his appointment in Oxford, Burn invited Edith Bülbring to join him as his assistant along with technician H.W. Ling. Burn designed a course for teaching medical students that took an experimental approach to pharmacology based on physiology. He expanded research in the department and encouraged community with daily lunches in the library often accompanied with music by departmental members. The Vice-Chancellor described the Department of Pharmacology as the "happiest family in Oxford". Over the years Burn had 162 co-workers in Oxford including Edith Bülbring, Hugh Blaschko and Sir John Vane.

Burn worked on the internal control of the body by the autonomic nervous system, carrying out seminal work on the release of noradrenaline from these nerves and introducing the controversial Burn-Rand hypothesis. Burn won the 1st Wellcome Gold Medal of the British Pharmacological Society in 1979.

1959-1984 - 3rd statutory chair

Sir William Paton FRS (1917-1993) was appointed in 1959. He was awarded a CBE in 1968 and a knighthood in 1979. Prior to Oxford he had worked in the National Institute of Medical Research, had been a Reader in Pharmacology in UCL and then Professor of Pharmacology in the Royal College of Surgeons. In NIMR he discovered with Eleanor Zaimis two different actions of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine; causing muscles to contract, and to increase blood pressure. They found these actions can be separated with two antagonist drugs: decamethonium to relax muscles which can be used in surgery, while hexamethonium became the first drug to safely lower blood pressure.

In Oxford he set up a research group investigating the pharmacology of cannabis with concerns that use would lead to heroin addiction. At one time he was a member of 72 committees including Chairman of Research Defence Society and Trustee of the Wellcome Trust. In 1991 he was awarded the 7th Wellcome Gold Medal from the British Pharmacological Society.

1984-2005 - 4th statutory chair

A. David Smith FMedSc<nowiki/>i (b. 1938) spent his entire academic career in the University of Oxford. His research into biochemical changes with disease and prevention focuses on dementia. He co-founded the Oxford Project to Investigate Memory and Ageing (OPTIMA) which found mild cognitive impairment can be significantly reduced in over half of cases through treatment with homocysteine-lowering B vitamins in subjects with a good omega-3 fatty acids status. Smith co-founded the International Brain Research Organization's journal Neuroscience in 1976 and served as Chief Editor until 2001.

As well as Head of Department, Smith was appointed Founding Director of the MRC Anatomical Neuropharmacology Unit in 1985 which was associated with the Department of Pharmacology with Associate Director, Peter Somogyi FRS. In 1987 Smith negotiated an agreement with E.R. Squibb & Sons Inc., with a donation of £20 million to create a new larger purpose built building for the department and funding for research into brain diseases. Smith included a common room with a café as a communal space.

2006 - 5th statutory chair

Antony Galione FRS is the current holder of this position. Following a BA in Natural Science at Trinity College, University of Cambridge from 1989 he worked on the role of calcium oscillations in cell activation in Sir Michael Berridge's laboratory. After working in UCL on mammalian fertilisation with Michael Whitaker, he went to Johns Hopkins University as a Harkness Fellow studying the role of calcium signals in early development. In 1991 Galione joined the Department of Pharmacology. He was appointed Professor of Pharmacology in 2002, and elected to the Professorship of Pharmacology in 2006. He served as Head of the Department of Pharmacology from 2006-2015. Galione was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2010 and a Fellow of The Royal Society in 2016 for his work which focuses on calcium signalling.

Scientists

Notable visitors

  • Arnold D. Welch (1908–2003) – 1952–1953 – worked with Blaschko on storage of adrenaline in the adrenal gland, which led to an understanding of how several important drugs produce actions including reserpine used for treating high blood pressure and schizophrenia; 1953–1967 – established Department of Pharmacology, Yale University; president of the Squibb Institute for Medical Research, which resulted in the development of Captropril, the first of many ACE inhibitors; at the age of 75 years  coordinator of the National Cooperative Discovery Groups of the National Cancer Institute.
  • Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin FRS (1910–1994) – pioneered the use of crystallography to map the structures of penicillin, insulin, and vitamin B<sub>12</sub>; 1947 – elected 5th woman Fellow to the Royal Society; 1962 - Hodgkin was offered space by Burn and later Paton in the basement of Pharmacology for a crystallography room which was adapted with funding from the Royal Society; 1964 – Hodgkin received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and she remains Britain's only female Nobel Prize winner in science.
  • Alan William Cuthbert FRS (1932-2016) – Edith Bülbring who invited him to undertake some sucrose gap experiments in her laboratory in Oxford. Whilst there Cuthbert met Arnold Burgen, a pharmacologist visiting from Canada, who became the second Sheild Professor at Cambridge in 1962. This contact with Burgen led Alan to apply for, and secure, a Demonstratorship in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Cambridge in 1963; 1979 –1999 - Head of Department of Pharmacology, University of Cambridge. He carried out ground-breaking work on epithelia<nowiki/>l ion transport, and later on ion transport deficits that underlie cystic fibrosis. Cuthbert was awarded the 14th Wellcome Gold Medal. ÂÂ
  • Leslie Iversen FRS (1937-2020) – Visiting Professor of Neuropharmacology 1995-2020; 1970–1983 - Director of MRC Neurochemical Pharmacology Unit, Cambridge; 1983–1995 – Founding Director of Merck, Sharp & Dohme Neuroscience Research Centre, Harlow. He made seminal discoveries including characterization of neurotransmitter uptake mechanisms, which paved the way for the development of a new class of drug in widespread use, the antidepressants.  He pioneered the neuropeptide transmitter field, helping develop understanding of the mechanisms of neurotransmitter action. His work for the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Lords as a scientific advisor on a report on cannabis in 1998 led him to write about medicinal and drugs of abuse and later chaired the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs at the Home Office. Iversen was awarded the 13th Wellcome Gold Medal.

Heads of department

References

External links