Barry Potter's Biography

Barry Potter, Professor, University of Bath

Barry Potter is Professor of Medicinal & Biological Chemistry at Oxford University. He studied chemistry at Oxford, completing a D.Phil on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalysed phosphoryl transfer and receiving a D.Sc in 1993. After postdocs in Oxford and at the Max-Planck-Institute for Experimentelle Medizin in Göttingen, Germany, he became Lecturer in Biological Chemistry at Leicester University, winning a Lister Institute Fellowship, then moved to the Established Chair and Headship of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Bath as Lister Institute Professor. He returned to Oxford in 2015 as a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator and Fellow of University College, remaining Visiting Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at Bath. Research interests are in mechanistic enzymology, the chemical biology of signal transduction, and anticancer drug design and discovery. He has brought academically-discovered drugs to multiple clinical trials and co-founded the spin-out company Sterix, acquired by major pharma. He serves, or has served upon, numerous editorial boards including the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, ChemMedChem, Future Medicinal Chemistry and is an Editor of BJChemBio and was Associate Editor of the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry & Molecular Biology. He has published over 500 papers and is inventor of 45 granted US patent families. He has won four interdisciplinary Royal Society of Chemistry medals, the GlaxoSmithKline International Achievement Award, was “Investigator of the Year” at the 2012 European Life Science Awards and currently holds the 2015/16 RSC Biological & Medicinal Chemistry Section Endowed Lectureship in Medicinal Chemistry. He was elected to Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Academia Europaea.