Sir Simon Campbell awarded the first ‘RSC-BMCS Lifetime Achievement
Award’
Sir Simon Campbell was presented with the inaugural Royal Society of
Chemistry, Biological and Medicinal Chemistry Sector ‘Lifetime Achievement
Award in Medicinal Chemistry at the 18th RSC-SCI Medicinal Chemistry
Symposium in Cambridge on Wednesday 16th September 2015 in recognition
of his many contributions to the field
Simon was awarded his PhD from the University of Birmingham in 1965 and,
following postdoctoral positions in Chile with Professor Herbert Appel and W S
Johnson at Stanford , he accepted the challenge of setting up his own research
group in Sao Paulo Brazil as part of a programme organised by Carl Djerassi.
Simon then returned to the UK and joined Pfizer at Sandwich in 1972. During
his 26 years with the company he was part of many teams, working on
numerous therapeutic targets and disease areas. However, Simon is
particularly known for being a key contributor to the teams that discovered the
a1-adrenoceptor antagonist Cardura, a once daily treatment for hypertension
and BPH, the calcium antagonist Norvasc, a once daily treatment for
hypertension and angina and the PDE5 inhibitor Viagra, a compound originally
intended as another cardiovascular medicine ….. but of course things didn’t
quite work out that way! He has received a number of prestigious awards
during his career, including the RSC Award for Medicinal Chemistry in 1989, the
Herschberg Award from the American Chemical Society in 1997, the Galen
medal in 2007, and the Sir James Black Award for Drug Discovery in 2012.
Simon is one of very few industrialists who has been elected an FRS (1999),
and was also appointed CBE in 2006 for ‘services to science’. Simon’s illustrious
career has most recently been recognised with the award of a knighthood in
the 2015 New Year’s honours list
Dr Nadia Ahmad from the BMCS committee presenting Sir Simon Campbell
with the first ‘RSC-BMCS Lifetime Achievement Award in Medicinal Chemistry’
at the 18th RSC-SCI Medicinal Chemistry Symposium
Photo courtesy of Nigel Swain