Gregory Winter

Professor Sir Gregory Winter is a member of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge and most of his scientific career was based there. He was Head of Division of Protein and Nucleic Acid Chemistry, succeeding Cesar Milstein and has served as both Deputy and Acting Director of the LMB. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, was knighted in 2004 for services to science and in 2012 was appointed by the Queen as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Sir Gregory is a graduate of University of Cambridge (1973), specialising in chemistry and biochemistry; for his PhD (1976) and postdoctoral work (1977-1981) he specialised in protein and nucleic acid sequencing respectively and with colleagues determined the genome sequence of influenza virus. From 1982 he pioneered the science of protein engineering, focusing first on enzymes (with A. Fersht) and then antibodies. He invented techniques to humanise rodent antibodies for use as therapeutics (1986–), working with H. Waldmann in the development of alemtuzumab/Campath-1H. Later, in competition with R. Lerner, he developed methods to make fully human antibodies (1989–) against human self-antigens using antibody libraries. His inventions are used in most of the antibody products on the market, including the humanised antibodies alemtuzumab/Campath-1H, trastuzumab/Herceptin, bevacizumab/Avastin, palivizumab/Synagis and the first human antibody (adalimumab/Humira) to be approved by the US FDA. Sir Gregory has acted as an entrepreneur to translate his scientific inventions to medicines. He was a founder of Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT,1989) and Domantis (2000); these companies pioneered the use of antibody libraries to make fully human antibody therapeutics. CAT was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1997 and was responsible for the co-development of the therapeutic antibodies adalimumab/Humira and belimumab/Benlysta. CAT was acquired by AstraZeneca in 2006. Domantis developed a range of product leads based on single antibody domains and was acquired by GSK in 2006 in a private sale. Sir Gregory has won several international scientific prizes, including the Prix Louis Jeantet de Medecine (Switzerland) in 1989; the King Faisal International Prize for Medicine (Molecular Immunology, Saudi Arabia) in 1995; the Biochemical Analysis Prize of the German Society for Clinical Chemistry in 1995; the Cancer Research Institute William B. Coley Award (US) in 1999; and the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 2011. For his work with industry, he received the National Biotechnology Ventures Award (US) in 2004 and the BioIndustry Association Award (UK) in 2008. In March 2013 he was awarded the Gairdner Prize for the engineering of humanised monoclonal antibodies and their widespread use in medical therapy, particularly for treatment of cancer and immune disorders.