Members

Professor Dame Kay Davies, Chair
Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub
Professor Peter Rigby
Professor Eric Olson
Professor Nadia Rosenthal

Professor Dame Kay Davies

Professor Davies has conducted extensive research into a common genetic muscular disease called Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD).  Her research group has an international reputation and in the 1980s she developed a test which allowed for the screening of fetuses whose mothers have a high risk of carrying DMD.  DMD occurs when the dystrophin protein fails to express in muscle cells due to a mutation in the gene which codes for the protein.  In 1989 Davies discovered that the utrophin protein has similar properties to dystrophin and has since shown in mouse models that up regulation of the former protein in muscle cells can compensate for the absence of latter.  

Professor Davies also has considerable experience of biotechnology companies as a conduit for translating the results of experimental science into new therapeutics and diagnostics.  She co-founded one biotechnology company (Summit plc, formerly VASTox plc) and is a director of one other company.  She is a member of the Technology Transfer Challenge Committee at the  Wellcome Trust.

Professor Davies is a founding Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2003, and was made a Dame of the British Empire  (DBE) for services to science in the 2008 New Year Honours.

She is a Wellcome Trust governor and an Executive Editor of the journal Human Molecular  Genetics.

She is an Honorary Fellow, Somerville College, University of Oxford.

Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub

Sir Magdi Yacoub is currently Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the National Heart & Lung Institute, Imperial College and Founder and Director of Research at the Harefield Heart Science Centre (Magdi Yacoub Institute) overseeing over 60 scientists and students in the areas of tissue engineering, myocardial regeneration, stem cell biology, end stage heart failure and transplant immunology.

Professor Yacoub was born in Egypt and graduated from Cairo University Medical School in 1957, trained in London and held an Assistant Professorship at the University of Chicago. He is a former BHF Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery for over 20 years and Consultant Cardiothoracic Surgeon at Harefield Hospital from 1969-2001 and Royal Brompton Hospital from 1986-2001. Professor Yacoub established the largest heart and lung transplantation programme in the world where more than 2,500 transplant operations have been performed. He has also developed novel operations for a number of complex congenital heart anomalies. He was knighted for his services to medicine and surgery in 1991, awarded Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1998 and Fellowship of The Royal Society in 1999. A lifetime outstanding achievement award in recognition of his contribution to medicine was presented to Professor Yacoub by the Secretary of State for Health in the same year.

Research led by Professor Yacoub include tissue engineering heart valves, myocardial regeneration, novel left ventricular assist devices and wireless sensors with collaborations within Imperial College, nationally and internationally. He has also supervised over 18 higher degree (PhD/MD) students and published over 1,000 articles.

Sir Magdi has an active interest in global healthcare delivery with particular focus developing programmes in Egypt, Mozambique, Ethiopia and Jamaica. He is Founder and President of the Chain of Hope charity, treating children with correctable cardiac conditions from war-torn and developing countries and establishing training and research programmes in local cardiac units.

Professor Peter Rigby

Professor of Developmental Biology,
The Institute of Cancer Research.

Peter Rigby is one of the world’s best known developmental biologists and is currently Deputy Chairman of the Wellcome Trust.  Professor Rigby was Chief Executive of the Institute of Cancer Research since 1999 until 2011.  He is Professor of Developmental Biology at the University of London and works on the regulation of gene expression during the development of the embryo.  He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Professor Rigby has made several discoveries in oncogenesis and vertebrate development which have had major impact on thinking in these fields. He analysed how viruses transform cells, showing how to identify transformation-responsive genes which led to ground-breaking discoveries regarding RNA Polymerase III regulation, and the demonstration that TBP is a truly general transcription factor. He was one of the first to show that the transcriptional circuitries of stem cells and their differentiated derivatives are distinct. Recently he has studied how the boundaries of Hox gene expression are set and how myogenic regulatory factors are themselves regulated. His work on Myf5 has defined a novel mechanism for the regulation of complex genetic loci.

Professor Rigby has been a member of Medical Research Council, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Cancer Research UK and other research charity committees, and has advised numerous biotechnology companies. He is a member of the Council of Marie Curie Cancer Car and a Trustee of the University of London.

He has also been a member of advisory committees for the UK's major biomedical research funders, including the Medical Research Council, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Cancer Research UK and other research charities, as well as numerous biotechnology companies.

Professor Eric Olson

Professor and Chairman of Molecular Biology
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Science
Annie and Willie Nelson Professorship in Stem Cell Research
Pogue Distinguished Chair in Research on Cardiac Birth Defects

Professor Eric Olson received a B.A. from Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, N.C., and a Ph.D. from Bowman Gray School of Medicine of Wake Forest University.  After a postdoctoral fellowship at Washington University School of Medicine, he joined the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center as an Assistant Professor, where he rose to the rank of Professor and Chairman.  In 1995, he moved to The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, where he is professor and chairman of the Department of Molecular Biology. He holds the Annie and Willie Nelson Professor in Stem Cell Biology Chair.

Professor Olson has been studying muscle development since he landed his first faculty position in the mid 1980s.  Since that time Professor Olson and his team have discovered major pathways and molecular players that control muscle differentiation.  They discovered MEF-2, which promotes development of all three muscle-types: smooth, skeletal, and cardiac. They also discovered the skeletal muscle factor myogenin, the smooth muscle factor, myocardin, and Hand1 and Hand2, which control the growth of the chambers of the heart.

More recently, Professor Olson has focused on pathologic cardiac muscle growth and its link to heart failure.  More recently still, he has been investigating the role of microRNAs—small gene regulatory molecules—in that growth process.

Professor Olson is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine.  He has been active on many scientific advisory boards and serves on the editorial boards of numerous scientific journals.

Professor Nadia Rosenthal

Professor Rosenthal research focuses on developmental genetics of heart and skeletal muscle, the molecular biology of ageing and the role of growth factors and stem cells in tissue regeneration.  Since her 2001 arrival in Europe to become Head of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Mouse Biology Unit in Rome, she has been awarded EMBO membership, and the Ferrari-Soave Prize in Cell Biology. She has served on numerous international grant review committees, advisory panels and editorial boards and coordinates several major EU consortia on mouse genetics and disease models. She delivered the 2006 Howard Hughes Holiday Lectures on Potent Biology: Stem Cells, Cloning and Regeneration.  In 2005 Professor Rosenthal established a Partnership between EMBL and Imperial Collage London, where she holds a Professorship of Cardiovascular Science and co-directs of the Harefield Heart Science Centre with Sir Magdi Yacoub.

As part of a longstanding relationship with the Australian research community, Professor Rosenthal is a member of the Australia and New Zealand Society for Cell and Developmental Biology, for whom she designed the prestigious ANZSCDB Presidents Medal. She has been a faculty member of the Australian Developmental Biology Workshop and is also a Visiting Professor at The University of Western Australia. She spearheaded the election of Australia to EMBL as its first Associate Member and is the Head of Science for EMBL Australia, as well as the Founding Director of the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute at Monash University. In 2010 she was awarded an Australia Fellowship.