Melanie Lee

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Melanie Georgina Lee (born 29 July 1958) [1] is an English pharmaceutical industry executive and CEO of LifeArc, succeeding Dave Tapolczay in November 2018.

Contents

Career

Research

"Paul and Melanie's paper started a revolution in cell cycle research."

Kathleen Weston [2]

Lee received an undergraduate degree in Biology from the University of York, working with Simon Hardy, [3] and then a PhD at National Institute for Medical Research in London. [4]

Lee worked as a molecular genetics postdoc, first at Imperial College London on yeast and then from 1985 with Paul Nurse at the ICRF's Lincoln's Inn Laboratories. [2] Nurse's work on the cell cycle won him the Nobel Prize, and in his speech he cited Lee's work on finding a human homologue of the yeast gene cdc2. [5] Nurse said of this work that "I suppose the most astonishing thing was the way Melanie Lee in the lab did it by complementation." [6] Lee later recounted being uncomfortable with the competition in the laboratory. [4]

In 2003, she was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. [7]

Works

Business

Lee was appointed Chief Executive Officer of LifeArc in November 2018. [8] Lee currently serves on the Board of Directors at Sanofi and on the Board of Trustees at the Dementia Research Institute. Previously, she was Chief Scientific Officer of BGT Plc and was the founder and CEO of NightstaRx, a Syncona, Wellcome Trust company in 2014. [9]

She began her pharmaceutical industry career at Glaxo in 1988, leaving academia after she became pregnant. She joined Celltech in 1998 where she was Director of R&D. [10] She held the same role at UCB Pharmaceuticals and was CEO of Syntaxin Ltd from 2010 to 2013. [4] [11] [12] She had Chair and Deputy Chair Trustee appointments at Cancer Research Technology and Cancer Research UK respectively. She was on the board of Lundbeck [1] and founded the Think10 business advice company. [13]

She was an advisor to the 2014–15 Dowling Review of business-university research collaborations. [14]

Awards

In January 2019, Lee was awarded the BIA Lifetime Achievement Award. [15] She received a CBE in 2009 in respect of her for services to medical science [16] [17] and in 2014, she was named as one of the top 100 "leading practising scientists" in the UK by the Science Council. [18]

Personal life

She is married to Christopher, with whom she lives in London. They have two sons. [4]

Related Research Articles

Leland Harrison (Lee) Hartwell is former president and director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. He shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Paul Nurse and Tim Hunt, for their discoveries of protein molecules that control the division (duplication) of cells.

Cyclin-dependent kinase

Cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs) are the families of protein kinases first discovered for their role in regulating the cell cycle. They are also involved in regulating transcription, mRNA processing, and the differentiation of nerve cells. They are present in all known eukaryotes, and their regulatory function in the cell cycle has been evolutionarily conserved. In fact, yeast cells can proliferate normally when their CDK gene has been replaced with the homologous human gene. CDKs are relatively small proteins, with molecular weights ranging from 34 to 40 kDa, and contain little more than the kinase domain. By definition, a CDK binds a regulatory protein called a cyclin. Without cyclin, CDK has little kinase activity; only the cyclin-CDK complex is an active kinase but its activity can be typically further modulated by phosphorylation and other binding proteins, like p27. CDKs phosphorylate their substrates on serines and threonines, so they are serine-threonine kinases. The consensus sequence for the phosphorylation site in the amino acid sequence of a CDK substrate is [S/T*]PX[K/R], where S/T* is the phosphorylated serine or threonine, P is proline, X is any amino acid, K is lysine, and R is arginine.

G2 phase, Gap 2 phase, or Growth 2 phase, is the third subphase of interphase in the cell cycle directly preceding mitosis. It follows the successful completion of S phase, during which the cell’s DNA is replicated. G2 phase ends with the onset of prophase, the first phase of mitosis in which the cell’s chromatin condenses into chromosomes.

Tim Hunt British biochemist; Nobel laureate

Sir Richard Timothy Hunt, is a British biochemist and molecular physiologist. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Paul Nurse and Leland H. Hartwell for their discoveries of protein molecules that control the division of cells. While studying fertilized sea urchin eggs in the early 1980s, Hunt discovered cyclin, a protein that cyclically aggregates and is depleted during cell division cycles.

Paul Nurse English geneticist and Nobel laureate

Sir Paul Maxime Nurse, is an English geneticist, former President of the Royal Society and Chief Executive and Director of the Francis Crick Institute. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Leland Hartwell and Tim Hunt for their discoveries of protein molecules that control the division of cells in the cell cycle.

Kim Nasmyth British biochemist

Kim Ashley Nasmyth is an English geneticist, the Whitley Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, former scientific director of the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), and former head of the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford. He is best known for his work on the segregation of chromosomes during cell division.

Cdc25 is a dual-specificity phosphatase first isolated from the yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe as a cell cycle defective mutant. As with other cell cycle proteins or genes such as Cdc2 and Cdc4, the "cdc" in its name refers to "cell division cycle". Dual-specificity phosphatases are considered a sub-class of protein tyrosine phosphatases. By removing inhibitory phosphate residues from target cyclin-dependent kinases (Cdks), Cdc25 proteins control entry into and progression through various phases of the cell cycle, including mitosis and S ("Synthesis") phase.

London Research Institute

The Cancer Research UK London Research Institute (LRI) was a biological research facility which conducted research into the basic biology of cancer.

Kay Davies British geneticist and anatomist; educator

Dame Kay Elizabeth Davies is a British geneticist. She is Dr Lee's Professor of Anatomy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. She is director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) functional genetics unit, a governor of the Wellcome Trust, a director of the Oxford Centre for Gene Function, and a patron and Senior Member of Oxford University Scientific Society. Her research group has an international reputation for work on Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). In the 1980s, she developed a test which allowed for the screening of foetuses whose mothers have a high risk of carrying DMD.

Wee1

Wee1 is a nuclear kinase belonging to the Ser/Thr family of protein kinases in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Wee1 has a molecular mass of 96 kDa and is a key regulator of cell cycle progression. It influences cell size by inhibiting the entry into mitosis, through inhibiting Cdk1. Wee1 has homologues in many other organisms, including mammals.

Angelika Amon Austrian American academic molecular and cell biologist

Angelika Amon was an Austrian American molecular and cell biologist, and the Kathleen and Curtis Marble Professor in Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Amon's research centered on how chromosomes are regulated, duplicated, and partitioned in the cell cycle. Amon was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017.

G2-M DNA damage checkpoint

The G2-M DNA damage checkpoint is an important cell cycle checkpoint in eukaryotic organisms that ensures that cells don't initiate mitosis until damaged or incompletely replicated DNA is sufficiently repaired. Cells which have a defective G2-M checkpoint, if they enter M phase before repairing their DNA, it leads to apoptosis or death after cell division. The defining biochemical feature of this checkpoint is the activation of M-phase cyclin-CDK complexes, which phosphorylate proteins that promote spindle assembly and bring the cell to metaphase.

Julian Downward

(David) Julian (Harry) Downward FRS FMedSci is Associate Research Director at the Francis Crick Institute and Senior Group Leader at the Institute of Cancer Research. He was formerly head of the Signal transduction Laboratory at the London Research Institute. He is a member of the Editorial Board for Cell.

Alison Woollard is a British biologist. She is a lecturer in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford where she is also a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford.

Doreen CantrellCBE, FRS, FRSE, FMedSci, is a scientist and Professor of Cellular Immunology at the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee. She researches the development and activation T lymphocytes, which are key to the understanding the immune response.

Stephen Jackson (scientist)

Stephen Philip Jackson, FRS, FMedSci, is the Frederick James Quick Professor of Biology. He is a Senior Group Leader and Head of Cancer Research UK Laboratories at the Gurdon Institute.

Jim Cuthbert Smith

Sir James Cuthbert Smith is Director of Science at the Wellcome Trust and Senior Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute.

Caroline S. Hill

Caroline Susan Hill is a group leader and head of the Developmental Signalling Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute.

Tessa Holyoake Scottish oncology physician and leukemia researcher

Tessa Laurie Holyoake, was a Scottish haematology-oncology physician. She specialised in chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML), and discovered its stem cell. She was considered a world leading expert in leukaemia research.

Irene May Leigh is a British dermatologist. A former professor of Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, she is now a professor emeritus at the University of Dundee School of Medicine. Her research has focused on keratinocytes, non-melanoma skin cancers and genetic skin diseases. She was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1999 and appointed CBE in 2012.

References

  1. 1 2 "Notice of Annual General Meeting". Lundbeck. 1 March 2012. Archived from the original on 6 December 2017. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  2. 1 2 Weston, Kathleen. "6: Divide and Rule". Blue Skies and Bench Space. Cancer Research UK. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  3. ↑ "Honour for University of York plant biologist". University of York. 2 January 2009. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Cahoon, Lauren (26 September 2008). "From Watching 'The Expert' to Becoming An Expert". Science Magazine. doi:10.1126/science.caredit.a0800142 . Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  5. ↑ Nurse, Paul (2007). "The discovery of cdc2 as the key regulator of the cell cycle". Cells. Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  6. ↑ Smith, Jim (March 2009). "The cell cycle and beyond: an interview with Paul Nurse". Disease Models & Mechanisms. 2 (3–4): 113–5. doi:10.1242/dmm.002592. PMC   2650208 . PMID   19259383.
  7. ↑ Dr Melanie Lee CBE FMedSci, Academy of Medical Sciences. Retrieved 4 March 2014
  8. ↑ "LifeArc announces new CEO appointment". LifeArc. 4 September 2018. Retrieved 30 March 2019.
  9. ↑ "Melanie Lee". Life Science Integrates. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  10. ↑ "Melanie G. Lee CBE, PhD, FMedSci, DSc (Hons)". BloombergBusiness. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  11. ↑ "Dr Melanie Lee CBE FMedSci". The Academy of Medical Sciences. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  12. ↑ "Melanie Lee becomes CEO of Syntaxin". MedNous. Evernow Publishing. 8 February 2010. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  13. ↑ "About us". Think10. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  14. ↑ "Dowling Review Group". Royal Academy of Engineering. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  15. ↑ BIA. "Melanie Lee CBE | BIA Lifetime Achievement Award Winner 2019". www.bioindustry.org. Retrieved 30 March 2019.
  16. ↑ Dr. Melanie Lee, Chairman of CRT, is awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), Cancer Research Technology. Retrieved 4 March 2014
  17. ↑ "New Year honours list: DBEs and CBEs". The Guardian. 31 December 2008. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
  18. ↑ "The UK's 100 leading practising scientists". Times Higher Education. 17 January 2014. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
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