Media/ photo opportunities 3pm, Monday 30 September, Wellcome Trust Biocentre, University of Dundee.
Dr Nick Lydon who developed the leukaemia wonder drug Gleevec will return to his alma mater, the University of Dundee to deliver a lecture and to meet with one of the patients his drug cured - Ian Marsden, a commonwealth games athlete.
Nick Lydon studied for his PhD in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Dundee between 1980 and 1984 under the supervision of Dr David Stansfield. After a short period with the Schering Pharmaceutical Company he joined Novartis where he started to develop Gleevec, leading the drug discovery programme until it entered human clinical trials in 1997.
Such was the efficacy of the drug when it was being tested that the clinical trials had to be stopped as it was unethical to give patients the placebo when those on Gleevec were showing rapid recovery.
One who showed such a recovery was Ian Marsden, Commonwealth Games shooting champion who was diagnosed with leukaemia three years ago. After taking Gleevec Ian made a remarkable recovery making it to his fifth Commonwealth games in Manchester this summer. Ian, accompanied by his wife Hazel will meet the inventor of his cure Nick Lydon at the University of Dundee on Monday 30 September when Nick will deliver the 6th Dundee Cell Signalling Lecture at the Wellcome Trust Biocentre. Ian will have a chance to speak with Nick about his treatment and recovery.
Gleevec switches off an enzyme called ABL which becomes abnormally active in nearly all cases of CML leukaemia. Gleevec combats CML and has cured thousands of patients with the disease. Patients in hospices with only two or three weeks to live frequently discharge themselves and go on holiday after taking the drug for a very short time.
Gleevec also switches off a related enzyme called KIT, which becomes abnormally active in many stomach and intestinal cancers and is just as effective at alleviating these cancers as it is with CML.
Nick Lydon left Novartis in 1998 to set up his own biotechnology company Kinetix in Boston, Massachusetts. Three years later the company was taken over by Amgen, the world's largest and most successful biotechnology company, making Nick Lydon a multi-millionaire in the process. A few weeks ago he left the senior management of Amgen to join the biotechnology company Verizon in California.
In May 2002, Nick Lydon shared the General Motors Charles Kettering prize - the world's most prestigious prize for cancer research worth $500,000 with Brian Druker, the clinician who first demonstrated the clinical efficacy of Gleevec.
Nick Lydon will tell the story of the development of Gleevec in the large lecture theatre of the Wellcome Trust Biocentre at 4pm on Monday 30 September.
By Jenny Marra, Press Officer 01382 344910 j.m.marra@dundee.ac.uk