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Kim Rainsford is originally from Adelaide, Australia. He is a permanent resident of the UK and has joint British-Australian nationality. He graduated with a BSc (Hons) degree (Zoology & Animal Biology) from the Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia in 1968, and a PhD degree in Biochemistry from King’s College Hospital Medical School, University of London in 1970. He was awarded Membership in 1982, and later Fellow, of the Royal College of Pathologists in 1991. He has a lifetime appointment as Emeritus Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Sheffield Hallam University (UK). He was previously Chair & Head of Biomedical Sciences (1991-2003), and Foundation Director of the Biomedical Research Centre (BMRC; 1996-2003) at that university. Previously, he was a joint Professor of Biomedical Sciences (& Pharmacology) and Pathology at McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) (1988-1991); Senior Research Fellow and Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow at the University of Cambridge & Strangeway’s Research Laboratory as well as Supervisor in Pharmacology at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (UK) (1982-1988); Reader in Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of Zimbabwe Medical School, Harare (Zimbabwe) (1981-1982); Visiting Senior Scientist at the Lilly Research Centre (UK) (Windlesham, Surrey, UK) (1978-1980); Guest Professor in Pharmacology, Biozentrum at the University of Basel, Basel (Switzerland)) (1978-1980). Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer at the University of Tasmania (Australia) (1972-1979); Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Biochemistry at the Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) 1970-1972). His Honorary Positions include: Honorary Professor, Therapeutics Research Group, Department of Medicine, Princess Alexandra Hospital, University of Queensland, Woolloongabba, Qld, Australia (2002, 2007-2009); Honorary Staff Member and Coordinator, Manchester Medicines Network, School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester (2006-2008); Fellowship of the Institute of Biology [now Royal Society of Biology] (1991-present), Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine (1990-presnet, Later Life Fellow); Honorary Pharmacologist, Strangeway’s Research Laboratory, Cambridge, (UK) (1984-1988); Visiting Reader in Pharmacology, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, U.K. (1980-1987); Honorary Lecturer in Chemical Pathology, King’s College Hospital Medical School, University of London (1980-1982); Fellowship of the Institute of Biology [now Royal Society of Biology] (1991-present); Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (1970) and Chartered Scientist; Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry (1970); Visiting Fellow, John Curtin School for Medical Research, Department of Experimental Pathology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia (1974-1978). Among the Awards he has received are: Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 2000; Doctor Honoris Causae, Pécs University Medical School, 1997; Life-time Fellow, Royal Society of Medicine, 1990; Hans Selye Visiting Professor, Veterans Administration Medical Center, University of California, Irvine, 1995-present; Hetenyi Geza Memorial Medal & Diploma and Lifelong Member of the Hungarian Gastroenterological Society, 1994; Distinguished Honorary Member of the Worldwide Hungarian Medical Academy, 1992; Honorary Member of the Hungarian Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology Society, 2009. On July 1st 2023, he was presented with the Andrea Robert award for “Outstanding Contributions to the field of Gastrointestinal Pharmacology” at the IUPHAR Gastro-intestinal Section and its International Symposia on Cell/Tissue Injury and Cytoprotection/Organoprotection in Glasgow, Scotland. He has also been cited in Who’s Who in the World Today (from 1990). Professor Rainsford’s research interests are principally on (a) the mechanisms of actions and adverse reactions of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), analgesics and natural products used to treat pain and inflammatory diseases and (b) pathology and clinical aspects of pain in arthritic diseases. Professor Rainsford has published over 230 original research papers in the fields of clinical and experimental pharmacology of inflammatory diseases. He has also authored and/or edited 28 books and over 90 reviews in the fields of inflammation and pharmacology of anti-rheumatic and anti-inflammatory drugs. Some of his book publications include (a) Ibuprofen. Pharmacology, Therapeutics and Side Effects (Springer Basel, Heidelberg, 2012); (b) Ibuprofen. Discovery, Development and Therapeutics (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015); (c) Novel Natural Products: Therapeutic Uses in Pain, Arthritic and Gastro-intestinal Diseases. Progress in Drug Research Vol 70, (Springer Basel, Basel & Heidelberg, 2015); (d) Nimesulide. Actions and Uses (Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel, 2005; 2nd Edition pending); (e) Aspirin and Related Drugs (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York, 2004); and (f) Ibuprofen. A Critical Bibliographic Review (Taylor & Francis, London, 1999). Professor Rainsford is Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Inflammopharmacology [which he founded in 1991; which now has an Impact Factor of 5.8]. He has edited and guided the development of this journal now for over 30 years as its full-time Editor. It is published by a world-leader scientific publisher Springer-Nature AG, as a top-rated Springer-Nature journal. He has also served on the editorial boards of Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology since 1988 where is Assistant Editor for the Section on Clinical & Experimental Pharmacology; Inflammation Research (formerly Agents & Actions), since 1977. He has organised the conference series every 2-3 years on Inflammopharmacology with the Side Effects of Anti-inflammatory Drugs Symposium since 1983. Expertscape.com, whose PubMed algorithms place Prof Rainsford in the top 0.1% of scholars writing about Non-Narcotic Analgesics in the past 10 years (expertscape.com - @expertscapeNews – ‘Daily_Experts’). Currently, he has research programmes involving the nitric oxide-donating NSAIDs (NO-NSAIDS) in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Cambridge. He is leads a long-term programme in Latvia investigating therapies for improving the health of the clean-up workers (‘Liquidators’) who were involved in the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster over 30 years ago. He also has ongoing collaborative research with colleagues in Universities of Adelaide, Griffith’s University & the University of Queensland in Australia, and McMaster University, Hamilton ON, Canada.
Celia Garcia is a Professor at the Department of Clinical and Toxicological Analyses, FCF-University of São Paulo (USP) and an Adjunct Professor at Physiology, Pharmacology, and Neurosciences Department at Rutgers Medical School New Jersey; her international recognition includes serving as the President of the International Affairs Committee at American Society for Cell Biology-ASCB (2020-2022), Fellow of the ASCB, John Simon Guggenheim Fellow and member of The World Academy of Sciences, Associate Editor or/and on the board of the Journals Molecular and Biochemical Parasitology, 2010-present; Current Opinion in Microbiology, 2014-present; Methods X, 2014-present; Current Research in Microbial Sciences, 2020-; Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry, 2018-present; Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, 2019-Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology, 2020-.For the last few years, Dr. Garcia’s research at the University of São Paulo (USP) has made novel contributions to our understanding of the chemical signals that regulate the development of the malarial parasite. In a seminal paper using cell imaging and fluorescent calcium probes, Dr. Garcia demonstrated that the maintenance of a normal Ca2+ homeostatic mechanism in malaria parasites within the red blood cells supporting the hypothesis that malaria parasites are endowed with a piece of molecular signaling machinery for using calcium signaling to control their cell cycle. Her lab is the first to measure IP3 in physiological conditions in the presence of melatonin and propose the PLC-IP3 to be operative in malaria parasites. Her lab identified four candidates for GPCRs by bioinformatics at the Plasmodium genome database, among them PfSR25, a sensor for changes in potassium concentrations. The GPCR-like protein activates, leading to Ca2+ signaling in malarial parasites. By constructing the knock-out of PfSR25, her lab discovered that these modified parasites are less resistant than wild-type parasites to antimalarials, suggesting that the GPCR, PfSR25 could be a target for developing new antimalarial therapy.
Neil Carragher graduated from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland in 1992 with a BSc Honours degree in the subject of “Cell and Immunobiology”. He then took up a position within industry at the Yamanouchi Research Institute, Oxford, England where he also gained his PhD. He then held consecutive postdoctoral positions within the Department of Pathology, University of Washington, Seattle, USA and at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, Glasgow, Scotland. In 2004 Neil returned to the pharmaceutical industry as Principal Scientist with the Advanced Science and Technology Laboratory at AstraZeneca where he pioneered early multiparametric high-content phenotypic screening approaches. In 2010 he once again made the career switch from industry to academia and took up the post of Principal Investigator at the University of Edinburgh where he leads a research group and is currently Professor of Drug discovery and Director of Translation at the University of Edinburgh and primary research interests include advancing cell based assay technologies and high-content analysis, phenotypic screening, Reverse Phase Protein Array (RPPA) technology and drug mechanism-of-action studies. Neil is a founding member of the European Cell Based Assay Interest group https://www.eucai.org former President of the Society of Biomolecular Imaging and Informatics https://sbi2.org/. He is also co-founder of the spin out company: PhenoTherapeutics Ltd. https://www.phenotherapeutics.com/
Prof Songca is the deputy Vice-Chancellor responsible for Teaching and Learning at UKZN. Previously he served at UNIZULU as DVC: TL and WSU as the DVC: AAR. Before this, he was the overall coordinator for the turn-around framework projects, and prior, he was the executive dean of the faculty of Science, Engineering, and Technology at WSU. Currently, he is serving at the HEQC of the CHE as a chairperson of the NSRC. He has served as the representative of WSU and UKZN in their respective Provincial Skills Development Forums. He has served as a board member of the Eastern Cape Information Technology Initiative, where he was the head of the Human Resources sub-committee. He has also served as the coordinator of the National Research Network on e-Skills, an initiative of the erstwhile e-Skills Institute (eSI), now the Ikamva National e-skills Institute reporting to the national Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services. He qualified with a Ph.D. from Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, in organic chemistry with a medicinal slant and possesses experience in this area spanning over three decades. He has attracted several research grants, so far over R70 million from NRF, SAAVI, DTPS, Anglo American, DeBeers, Sentrachem, and others. He has read more than 90 conference papers and published more than 110 articles in both local and international journals and books. He is actively involved in student supervision and has graduated more than 25 postgraduate students, including honors, masters, and doctorates, and is currently supervising 4 PhD’s and MSc’s. He has 25 years of experience lecturing chemistry at Unitra, UZ, UNISA, UL, and WSU, from 1983-2008. He is married to Reverend Nokulunga Patricia Songca, a friend, partner, and ally of great influence for 38 years.