Alan Fairlamb

Alan Hutchison Fairlamb CBE, FRSE, FLS (born 30 April 1947, Newcastle upon Tyne, England) is a Wellcome Principal Research Fellow, Professor of Biochemistry and Head of the Division of Biological Chemistry and Drug Discovery at the University of Dundee, Scotland. He is also a member of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee of the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) -- an independent global programme of scientific collaboration co-sponsored by UNICEF, UNDP, the World Bank and WHO.

Professor Alan Fairlamb and his team study the protozoan parasites causing three different diseases - sleeping sickness, Chagas disease and leishmaniasis. He was one of the 250 scientists involved in the genome sequencing of these parasites.

In 1985, Alan Fairlamb discovered an unique thiol compound present in these parasites, and named it trypanothione. This thiol metabolite is quite different from its human equivalent, glutathione. Trypanothione allows the parasites to fend off free radicals and other toxic oxidants produced by the immune system of the infected patient, and was shown to be vital for parasite survival and virulence. For instance, antimonials neutralize the Leishmania parasite’s antioxidant defence system, allowing the patient to clear the infection.

Since 2006, Alan Fairlamb has been co-director of the Drug Discovery Unit at the University of Dundee. The new centre, opened in 2005, has new facilities for high-throughput screening and medicinal chemistry. These will take the drug discovery/development process further than any other UK university, to a stage where pharmaceutical companies will have sufficient data to move into the production stage.