Nicholas John White KCMG OBE FRCP FMedSci FRS (born 13 March 1951) is a British medical doctor and researcher, specializing in tropical medicine in developing countries. [1] He is known for his work on tropical diseases, especially malaria using artemisinin-based combination therapy. [2]
White studied medicine at the Guy's Hospital Medical School at King's College London. He completed his residency in internal medicine at various hospitals in London and at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. Since 1980, he has been part of a scientific collaboration (Mahidol Oxford Research Unit) between the faculty of Mahidol University in Thailand and the Nuffield Department of Medicine of the University of Oxford. Since 1986 he has been the director of this department and has opened similar collaborations with Vietnam (1991) and Laos (1999). These collaborations are dedicated to research on tropical diseases such as malaria, melioidosis, [3] typhoid fever, tetanus, dengue fever, rickettsiosis, and tropical outbreaks of influenza.
White was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1999. [4] He was awarded the GlaxoSmithKline Prize in 2005 [5] and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2006. [6] In 2010, White received both the John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health Award [7] and the Prince Mahidol Award. [8] In 2017 he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG). [9]
White is the author or coauthor of more than 1000 scientific publications. His h-index is 164 (as of May 2018). [10] He is married and has three children and six house chickens.[ citation needed ]
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other vertebrates. Human malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, fatigue, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. Symptoms usually begin 10 to 15 days after being bitten by an infected Anopheles mosquito. If not properly treated, people may have recurrences of the disease months later. In those who have recently survived an infection, reinfection usually causes milder symptoms. This partial resistance disappears over months to years if the person has no continuing exposure to malaria.
Chlorproguanil/dapsone/artesunate was an experimental antimalarial treatment that entered Phase III clinical trials in 2006. Development was halted because it was associated with an increased risk of haemolytic anaemia in patients with glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency.
Sir Hugh Charles Jonathan Godfray CBE FRS is a British zoologist. He is Professor of Population Biology at Balliol College, Oxford, Director of the Oxford Martin School and Director Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food.
The history of malaria extends from its prehistoric origin as a zoonotic disease in the primates of Africa through to the 21st century. A widespread and potentially lethal human infectious disease, at its peak malaria infested every continent except Antarctica. Its prevention and treatment have been targeted in science and medicine for hundreds of years. Since the discovery of the Plasmodium parasites which cause it, research attention has focused on their biology as well as that of the mosquitoes which transmit the parasites.
Project 523 is a code name for a 1967 secret military project of the People's Republic of China to find antimalarial medications. Named after the date the project launched, 23 May, it addressed malaria, an important threat in the Vietnam War. At the behest of Ho Chi Minh, Prime Minister of North Vietnam, Zhou Enlai, the Premier of the People's Republic of China, convinced Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, to start the mass project "to keep [the] allies' troops combat-ready", as the meeting minutes put it. More than 500 Chinese scientists were recruited. The project was divided into three streams. The one for investigating traditional Chinese medicine discovered and led to the development of a class of new antimalarial drugs called artemisinins. Launched during and lasting throughout the Cultural Revolution, Project 523 was officially terminated in 1981.
Tu Youyou is a Chinese malariologist and pharmaceutical chemist. She discovered artemisinin and dihydroartemisinin, used to treat malaria, a breakthrough in twentieth-century tropical medicine, saving millions of lives in South China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America.
Dario Renato Alessi is a French-born British biochemist, Director of the Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit and Professor of Signal Transduction, at the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee.
Sir Peter John Ratcliffe, FRS, FMedSci is a British physician-scientist who is trained as a nephrologist. He was a practising clinician at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford and Nuffield Professor of Clinical Medicine and head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine at the University of Oxford from 2004 to 2016. He has been a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford since 2004. In 2016 he became Clinical Research Director at the Francis Crick Institute, retaining a position at Oxford as a member of the Ludwig Institute of Cancer Research and director of the Target Discovery Institute, University of Oxford.
Dame Anne Jane Mills, is a British authority on health economics. She is deputy director and Provost and Professor of Health Economics and Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Sir Adrian Vivian Sinton Hill, is an Irish vaccinologist, Director of the Jenner Institute and Lakshmi Mittal and Family Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Oxford, an honorary Consultant Physician in Infectious Diseases, and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. Hill is a leader in the field of malaria vaccine development and was a co-leader of the research team which produced the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, along with Professor Sarah Gilbert of the Jenner Institute and Professor Andrew Pollard of the Oxford Vaccine Group.
Adrianus Mattheus Dondorp is a Dutch intensivist, infectious diseases physician, and head of the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit in Bangkok. He is best known for his research in severe falciparum malaria, a disease that requires intensive care in hospital. He chairs the World Health Organization Technical Expert Group on antimalarial medication drug resistance and containment.
Sir Andrew James McMichael, is an immunologist, Professor of Molecular Medicine, and previously Director of the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford. He is particularly known for his work on T cell responses to viral infections such as influenza and HIV.
The Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University is the only faculty specialising in tropical medicine in Thailand. It operates the Mahidol Bangkok School of Tropical Medicine (Mahidol-BSTM) as the main teaching facility and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases for patient treatment.
Dominic Kwiatkowski was an English medical researcher and geneticist who was head of the parasites and microbes programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge and a Professor of Genomics at the University of Oxford. Kwiatkowski applied genomics and computational analysis to problems in infectious disease, with the aim of finding ways to reduce the burden of disease in the developing world.
Alan Frederick Cowman AC, FRS, FAA, CorrFRSE, FAAHMS, FASP, FASM is an internationally acclaimed malaria researcher whose work specialises in researching the malaria-causing parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, and the molecular mechanisms it uses to evade host responses and antimalarial drugs. He is currently deputy directory of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) in Melbourne, and his laboratory continues to work on understanding how Plasmodium falciparum, infects humans and causes disease. He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in 2011 and awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia in 2019 for his "eminent service to the biological sciences, notably to molecular parasitology, to medical research and scientific education, and as a mentor."
Dame Sarah Catherine Gilbert FRS is an English vaccinologist who is a Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Oxford and co-founder of Vaccitech. She specialises in the development of vaccines against influenza and emerging viral pathogens. She led the development and testing of the universal flu vaccine, which underwent clinical trials in 2011.
The Jenner Institute is a research institute on the Old Road Campus in Headington, east Oxford, England. It was formed in November 2005 through a partnership between the University of Oxford and the UK Institute for Animal Health. It is associated with the Nuffield Department of Medicine, in the Medical Sciences Division of Oxford University. The institute receives charitable support from the Jenner Vaccine Foundation.
Kevin Marsh is a British Malariologist, academic and a researcher. He is a Professor of Tropical Medicine and Director of Africa Oxford Initiative at University of Oxford. He is also a senior advisor at African Academy of Sciences.
Elizabeth Ashley is a British physician who is Director of the Laos-Oxford-Mahosot Hospital-Wellcome Trust Research Unit (LOMWRU) in Laos. She specialises in infectious diseases and medical microbiology and virology. She is an associate editor for the Malaria Journal and serves on the Council of the International Society for Infectious Diseases.
Susanna Jane Dunachie is a British microbiologist who is Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Oxford. Her work considers microbiology and immunology to better understand bacterial infection and accelerate the development of vaccines. She has focused on melioidosis, scrub typhus and tuberculosis. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she studied T cell immunity to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.
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