Professor Barry Potter

Barry Potter is Emeritus Professor of Medicinal & Biological Chemistry at Oxford and Fellow of University College. He studied chemistry at Oxford, with a DPhil on enzyme-catalyzed phosphoryl transfer and later a DSc for published work. After an Oxford postdoc and at the Max-Planck-Institute for Experimental Medicine in Göttingen he was Lecturer and Lister Institute Fellow at Leicester, moving to the Chair of Medicinal Chemistry at Bath and in 2015 returned to Oxford to the Department of Pharmacology. Research interests are application of organic and medicinal chemistry to biology and medicine, mechanistic enzymology, cell signalling chemistry and anticancer drug discovery. He has published over 550 papers, is inventor of 45 US patents and has brought his drugs to many clinical trials with clinical benefit. He co-founded the spin-out company Sterix and was Director of Medicinal Chemistry and Chief Scientific Officer. He has won four interdisciplinary RSC medals, the RSC Medicinal Chemistry Endowed Lectureship, the GSK International Achievement Award, a European Life Science Award and the 2018 Tu Youyou Award and was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences and Academia Europaea.