Pharmacology and Ethnopharmacology

Biography

Peter Taylor is currently Professor of Microbiology at UCL. He obtained a PhD in Medical Microbiology at Charing Cross Hospital Medical School and was a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Frank Unger’s group at the Sandoz Research Institute in Vienna working at the chemistry – biology interface on novel agents for the treatment of bacterial infections, before taking up a faculty position at the Leeds University, UK in 1978. He returned to industry in 1981 to work for Bayer AG at their pharmaceutical research center in Wuppertal, Germany to renew interests in new paradigms for bacterial infections and from 1983 to 1985 represented Bayer in a joint commercial venture with Yale University, based in New Haven, CT. He returned to the UK in 1985 to help establish a new research center in advanced drug formulation and delivery in Horsham, West Sussex for Ciba-Geigy. He maintained a group investigating liposomal delivery after the merger of Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz and left Novartis in 1998 to return to academia in London to reestablish his microbiological credentials. His research interests involve novel approaches to the treatment of infectious disease. He has undertaken various roles for the Medical Research Council and recently served on the MRC’s Infections and Immunity Board. He has also represented UK on the Executive and Management Boards of the European Union Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance in Brussels. His interest in the microbiology of space flight has led to service on UK Space Agency working groups

Research Interest

He researches novel approaches to the treatment of infection, with a focus on the development of antibacterial therapeutics that suppress or abrogate the emergence of drug resistant variants or compromise the virulence of systemic pathogens such as methicillin-resistant staphylococci (MRSA), Bacillus anthracis (the causative agent of inhalation anthrax) and the neonatal neuropathogen Escherichia coli K1. He has wide-ranging interest in natural products, in particular the capacity of catechin gallates derived from Japanese green tea to modulate the beta-lactam resistance of pathogenic staphylococci. He also studies the impact of spaceflight on the fitness of pathogenic bacteria that may contaminate space vessels.