GUEST Lecture Ariens Awardee 2019 Professor Stephen Hill

Lecture of the 2019 Ariens Awardee (Award in memory of Professor E.J. Ariens of the Dutch Pharmacological Society)

Professor Stephen Hill, Professor of Molecular Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences, The University of Nottingham Medical School

“Fluorescent ligand and NanoBRET approaches to study target engagement and ligand-binding kinetics at GPCRs and RTKs”

Professor Steve Hill is Professor of Molecular Pharmacology in the School of Life Sciences, University of Nottingham. He is also Co-Director of the new University of Birmingham and University of Nottingham Centre of Membrane Proteins and Receptors (COMPARE] and President of the British Pharmacological Society. Steve obtained his first degree in pharmacology at the University of Bristol and his PhD (pharmacology) at the University of Cambridge. His research has concentrated mainly on the molecular pharmacology of cell surface receptors (particularly G protein-coupled receptors [GPCRs] but more recently receptor tyrosine kinases). Currently, the emphasis of his work is on the study of ligand-receptor interactions in membrane microdomains of single living cells using a variety of fluorescent imaging techniques including fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, confocal imaging and resonance energy transfer techniques. In particular, he is interested in the cooperative interactions (positive and negative) between the protomers of receptor dimers, the influence of small molecule allosteric regulators on orthosteric ligand binding and signalling and the potential for protein-protein interactions between receptors and associated signalling proteins to convey signalling bias. He joined the University of Nottingham in 1981 and was subsequently promoted to Reader (1989) and Professor of Molecular Pharmacology (1995). In 1997, he became Director of the Institute of Cell Signalling and in 2008 Head of the School of Biomedical Sciences (until 2013). He was a founding director of the University of Nottingham spin-out company CellAura Technologies Ltd that provided fluorescent ligands to the scientific community until it was acquired by HelloBio in 2014. His work is currently funded by BBSRC, MRC and the EU ITN ONCORNET. Steve is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Western Australia. He was recently awarded the 2018 Vice Chancellor’s Medal from the University of Nottingham.