Hosted by the School of Medicine at Cardiff University
Register on Eventbrite
The Hypoxia Inducible Factor operates in all metazoans, providing a means of regulating gene expression in response to the availability of oxygen. We now understand how this system operates at a molecular level. This has led to the development of a drug that has been approved for antagonising HIF-2 in renal cancer, and other drugs have been approved that activate the HIF pathway to treat anaemia in renal patients. HIF activators have pleiotropic effects and may be useful in other settings.
Prof Patrick Maxwell has been Regius Professor of Physic and Head of the School of Clinical Medicine at the University of Cambridge since 2012. He is a clinician scientist and has been centrally involved in a series of discoveries that have revealed how changes in oxygenation are sensed, and how genetic alterations cause kidney disease.
He was elected Chair of the Medical Schools Council, the representative body for UK medical schools for 2022-2025. Its current membership includes forty–five medical schools (comprising of forty our undergraduate and one postgraduate medical school). He has been Chair of the British Skin Foundation since 2017, member of the National Cancer Centre Singapore Scientific Advisory Board since 2013, faculty member of the Eureka Institute for Translational Medicine since 2010, Director of the Cambridge University Health Partners and Non-Executive Director of the Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust since 2012. In Cambridge he heads the internationally renowned School of Clinical Medicine, which has grown substantially under his leadership, approximately doubling in size.