Kevin Brindle's Biography

Kevin Brindle, Professor, University of Cambridge

Kevin M. Brindle, D. Phil., is Professor of Biomedical Magnetic Resonance in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge and a senior group leader in the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. He became involved in magnetic resonance in 1978 when he started a D. Phil. on 1 H NMR studies of cells with Prof. Iain Campbell FRS at the University of Oxford, where he was also an undergraduate. He joined the laboratory of Prof Sir George Radda FRS at Oxford in 1983 and in 1986 became a Royal Society University Research Fellow. In 1990 he moved to a lectureship at the University of Manchester and in 1993 to a lectureship in Cambridge, where he became Professor in 2005. His initial work involved studies of the kinetic properties of enzymes in cells and tissues using molecular genetic, isotope exchange and magnetization transfer methods. This also involved the development of methods to study proteins in intact cells. In 1990 he started work in the field of cancer, initially using DCE MRI to study the action of anti-vascular drugs and subsequently he developed methods to detect tumour cell death post-treatment, which included a targeted MRI contrast agent. Since 2006 he has been working on metabolic imaging with hyperpolarized 13C-labelled cell substrates to detect treatmen t response in tumours. He is currently associated with the editorial boards of NMR in Biomedicine, Contrast Media and Molecular Imaging and Cancer and Metabolism. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2012.