Speaker Profile
Alan Boobis

Alan Boobis PhD, OBE

Toxicology
London, England, United Kingdom

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Alan Boobis received a Bachelor's degree in pharmacology in 1971 from the University of Glasgow (UK). In 1974 he received a Ph.D. degree in pharmacology from the University of Glasgow (UK) working in the area of drug metabolism. His doctoral work involved studies of the influence of changes in hemodynamics in the liver on drug disposition and the effects of lipid peroxidation on P450 integrity. Professor Boobis then worked as a Fogarty Visiting Fellow for two years with Dr. Dan Nebert at the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, MD). During this time he studied the effects of modulating factors on benzo[a[pyrene DNA adduction, and was also involved in an investigation of genetic and developmental factors on P450 expression and activity. In 1976 he joined the Department of Clinical Pharmacology at what was then the Royal Postgraduate Medical School (London, UK), as an MRC research training fellow. He was then appointed to a tenured lectureship and subsequently promoted to Professor of Biochemical Pharmacology, his current position (at what is now Imperial College London).

He is now also Director of the Toxicology Unit (funded by PHE & DH) in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London. His current research interests include mechanistic toxicology, drug metabolism, biomarker discovery in toxicology, using protein-based approaches, and the application of this knowledge in risk assessment. He has published over 220 original research papers and is former Editor-in-Chief, now emeritus editor, of Food and Chemical Toxicology. He is a current or past member of a number of national and international grant review and advisory committees. Previously, he was deputy chair of the U.K. Advisory Committee on Pesticides (1999-2002) and is a former member of the UK Committees on Carcinogenicity and on Toxicity (deputy chair), the HPA Board Sub-Committee for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards, and the EFSA Panel on Plant Protection Products and their Residues (vice-chair) and the EFSA Panel on Contaminants in Food and Feed.

He is currently a member of several IPCS working groups, JECFA (chair), JMPR (alternating chair), and the Committee on the Adverse Effects of Air Pollution. He is a member and former chair of the Board of Trustees and the Executive Committee of ILSI HESI, vice-president of ILSI Europe, and a member of the Board of Trustees of ILSI. He is involved in several HESI and ILSI Europe projects. He received an OBE for his work on the risk assessment of pesticides in 2003. He is an Honorary Member of EUROTOX, recipient of the EUROTOX Merit Award, The British Toxicology Society John Barnes Prize Lecture, and the Royal Society of Chemistry Toxicology Award. He is also a Fellow of the British Toxicology Society and a Fellow of the Society of Biology.
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