SUMMARY
Professor David Brindley obtained his B.Sc. and Ph.D degrees from the University of Birmingham, England in 1963 and 1966, respectively. He joined as a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Alberta in 1988 where he is working currently. He is also the Director of the Signal Transduction Research Group and the Co-director of the Cancer Research Institute of Northen Alberta.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Professor Brindley major research interest's is to improve the treatment of breast cancer. In particular, Professor Brindley and his team study how an enzyme called autotaxin promotes breast tumor growth, immune evasion, metastasis and decreases the efficacy of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. It does this by producing a compound called LPA, which also activates inflammation. They are also studying a family of enzymes that degrade LPA and attenuate its ability to signal. One of his major projects is to discover how to block the activation of the autotaxin-LPA-inflammatory axis as a strategy for preventing the adverse side effect of radiotherapy in causing fibrosis (scarring).
ACHIEVEMENTS
Professor Brindley was a winner of the Fournier Pharma-CLC Award in Atherosclerosis Research Communication and the Brooks and District Diabetes Association Research Prize. He was also awarded the Academico Correspondiente of the Royal Academy of Pharmacy, Spain, the Senior Investigator of Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research and more. Professor Brindley has also graduated 27 PhD students and 4 MSc students.
