Peter Malcolm Colman AC FRS FAA FTSE (born 1944)[5] is the head of the structural biology division at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia.[7]
Peter Colman | |
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Born | Peter Malcolm Colman 3 April 1944[5] |
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Thesis | The physical structure of two parabanic acid complexes and an investigation of short intermolecular carbon-oxygen contacts (1969) |
Doctoral advisor | Harry Medlin[4] |
Website | www |
Colman was educated at the University of Adelaide, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics in 1966[5] and a PhD in 1969 for research on the chemical structure of parabanic acid complexes supervised by Harry Medlin.[4]
Colman's research interests are in structural biology,[8][9][10] especially of human B-cell lymphoma 2 (BCL-2).[11][12][13][14] Colman determined the three-dimensional structure of the influenza virus neuraminidase and, in one of the earliest cases of structure-based drug design, discovered zanamivir, the first-in-class neuraminidase inhibitor for influenza.[15] His subsequent structural studies on resistance to this drug class suggested how to design drugs against moving targets.[15] His discoveries underpin drug stockpiling for pandemic preparedness.[15] He has made seminal contributions to structural studies of antibodies and antibody-antigen complexes.[15] Recent[when?] work on apoptosis solves the long-standing problem of how pro-apoptotic Bax changes conformation to dimerise and then oligomerise and permeabilise the mitochondrial membrane, an essential step in the intrinsic cell-death pathway.[15]
His work has been published in leading peer reviewed scientific journals including Nature,[8][16][17][18][19][20] the Journal of Molecular Biology,[21] and Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology.[22]
In the Queen's 2017 Birthday Honours Colman was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC), Australia's highest civilian honour, "for eminent service to medical research, particularly in the fields of structural biology and medicinal chemistry, as a leader in the commercial translation of scientific discoveries, to professional organisations, and as a mentor of young scientists".[23]
Colman was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2014.[15] In 2001 he was awarded a Centenary Medal "For service to Australian society and science in structural biology".[2] Colman was also elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1989 and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering in 1997.[5] He was awarded the Lemberg Medal in 1988[24] and the Macfarlane Burnet Medal and Lecture in 1995.[25]
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