Christopher Parkinson

Biography

Chris is originally from Sydney, NSW and completed his doctoral studies before leaving Australia to broaden his interests and pursue a career overseas. This initially involved a research fellowship at Colorado State University (coincidentally also CSU) examining the synthesis of the Calyculins (a class of sponge metabolites that displayed interesting phosphatase activity) and the applicability of these compounds in anti-cancer studies. At the conclusion of this fellowship, Chris moved to London to take up a faculty position at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine. He then sought to pursue the applications of chemistry in the "real world", and took up a position leading a group at African Explosives and Chemical Industries (AECI) to examine new production techniques for pharmaceuticals for the African generics industry. This was just after the end of the apartheid era and South Africa was a nation looking at integration into the world after many years of trade sanctions. His group (employing up to 25 scientists at times) was later acquired by the CSIR (equivalent of the CSIRO) to became the centre of small molecule drug discovery activities in South Africa, focusing on diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV. During this time, Chris played roles in the establishment of the South African Malaria Initiative (SAMI) and served on the steering committee, was a work package leader in the European Union FP6 malarial drug development project (AntiMal), served on the steering committee of the South African National Drug Development Platform, and was part of the expert advisory panel on small molecule drug discovery (the emphasis was on discovery in developing countries) for ICS-UNIDO. He ran the small molecule drug discovery group at CSIR until early 2012, before accepting a position in CSU Pharmacy at Orange in Medicinal Chemistry (returning to Australia after 22 years). Chris has around 40 publications and patents and 50 presentations in scientific meetings spread across eleven countries.

Research Interest

Biomedical Science