Michael J. Parnham PhD, FBPharmacoIS

Dr. Parnham studied Pharmacology at Chelsea (now King's) College, London - which included a year working on prostaglandins and pain with Sergio Ferreira at The Royal College of Surgeons - and he completed doctoral studies at Bristol University in 1973. Postdoctoral research took him to Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands to work with Ivan Bonta on prostaglandins and chronic inflammation. This work led to the award of the Goslings Prize for research on antirheumatic therapy and the co-founding with Ivan Bonta and Kay Brune of the European Workshop on Inflammation, of which Dr. Parnham was secretary for many years.

In 1980, he moved to Cologne, Germany for a decade in anti-inflammatory research with A. Nattermann and subsequently Rhone-Poulenc.

During this time he was Co-Editor of AGENTS AND ACTIONS and he and his colleagues were honoured in 1990 by the award of the Prix Galien Germany for development of a novel organoselenium approach to anti-inflammatory therapy. In the same year Dr. Parnham established a consultancy in Bonn - where he also presided as Managing Editor (1992-2013) over the transformation of AGENTS AND ACTIONS into INFLAMMATION RESEARCH - and became Privatdozent in Pharmacology and Toxicology at Goethe University, Frankfurt.

Appointed Adjunct Professor in 1998, Dr. Parnham also then moved to Zagreb, Croatia to establish laboratories in pharmacology and toxicology in the new Research Institute of PLIVA Pharmaceuticals, subsequently becoming Senior Scientific Advisor. The research included the development of biosimilar agents for which the team won a PLIVA Award and studies on the immunomodulatory effects of macrolide antibiotics. Following the change in 2006 of the institute to GlaxoSmithKline Research Centre Zagreb, he was for 2 years Director of Preclinical Discovery working on novel macrolides and steroid conjugates. Dr. Parnham is currently Head of Preclinical Research in the Fraunhofer Institute of Molecular Biology & Applied Ecology IME, Project group, Translational Medicine and Pharmacology, in Frankfurt am Main. Dr. Parnham has published and lectured extensively and organised symposia on various aspects of immunopharmacology and anti-inflammatory therapy.