Professor David Brown

David joined the School of Biosciences in October 2011. He obtained his first degree in Biophysics at the University of Leeds in 1998 and then went on to study for his PhD in Structural Biology at the Institute of Cancer Research studying drug/DNA interactions. David then was awarded an SERC personal fellowship to focus on drug discovery at Kings College University of London where he worked on structural studies of complexes of inhibitors of Thymidine Kinase from Herpes Simplex Virus.
He then spent 15 years at Pfizer working on a large number of drug discovery programmes for a wide range of disease areas including Cardiovascular, Tissue Repair, Sexual Health, Allergy and Respiratory, Antifungals, Antivirals. David became Director of Structural Biology and Biophysics Group which utilised techniques such as NMR, X-ray crystallography, Mass Spectrometry, ITC and SPR to investigate protein structure and function and elucidate mode of action of ligand binding. During his time at Pfizer David solved the first structure of a Phosphodiesterase (PDE5 – the biological target of Viagra) which was a novel enzyme class to understand the function, mechanism and modes of inhibition. David is a member of the Protein Form and Function Group.
ORCID ID:0000-0003-4605-4779

David's research is focussed on Structure, function and mechanism of protein inhibition for drug targets, in particular phosphodiesterases and kinases 

• Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry 
• British Crystallographic Association 
• Co-Founder of CANGENX (a Structural Biology and Biophysics CRO) 
• CCP4 Executive Committee 
• Chair of MXWG (Macromolecular Crystallography Working Group ) for DIAMOND