| advances in treatment of respiratory diseases |
| BIOSCIENCE TODAY SEPTEMBER•OCTOBER 2018 |
Forging advances in the treatment of
respiratory diseases In this issue of BioScience Today, we speak to Professor Martin Gosling, about the inspiration behind his work, what motivates him daily, and the advances in the treatment of respiratory diseases that he is working to bring about. Martin is Professor of Molecular Pharmacology at the University of Sussex and Chief Scientific Officer at Enterprise Therapeutics. “As a child, I always found science interesting. My mother was a pharmacy technician and she’d talk to me about her work, which I found fascinating. For good or for bad, I always wanted to know how things worked. “Spending a year working in the pharmaceutical industry before I went to university was a turning point and I knew then that developing new treatments that would benefit people was my ambition. Research that was translational rather than purely academic was what I wanted to focus on, developing drug treatments that could make a difference – so I read pharmacology at university. “The action of drugs on physiological systems has always interested me and I soon found my niche researching ion channels – which I focused on for my PhD studies. Expressed by every cell of the body, ion channels are discrete holes in the membranes of cells that allow the flow of ions such as chloride and potassium into and out of cells. They are involved in many cellular processes such as nerve conduction and muscle contraction, and as such ion channels have long been explored as a conduit for new drug treatments. “I researched the role of ion channels in bone cells for my doctorate and later I researched the role they play in blood vessels. In 2001, I joined Novartis specifically to research respiratory diseases - now nearly 20 years later, I’m looking
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at how ion channels could be used therapeutically to deliver new treatments for respiratory diseases including cystic fibrosis. I moved back into academia, joining the University of Sussex not long after Novartis moved their respiratory research centre to the United States. “Academia can provide more latitude in terms of research area albeit grant funding is highly competitive. Working in the private sector resources may be more plentiful, but you have to put together a very strong commercial case for research to begin, plus companies can change strategic direction very quickly, like when there is a change of leadership for example. “In the last 15 years drug discovery in the UK has changed dramatically and now very few major pharmaceutical companies have research facilities in the UK, with thousands of jobs which were once here now based abroad. This has to raise the question of how we train the next generation of drug discovery scientists and where talented UK scientists will progress their careers. “At the same time, the model of research and development has changed dramatically and many smaller biotech companies are taking up the reins, but they simply don’t have the resources to train Continued on page 52