Peter Shepherd, Professor of University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. Peter Shepherd moved back to New Zealand from University College London in Sept 2004 and my research continues to be in the broad area of signal transduction with a particular focus on PI 3-kinase and Wnt signaling pathways. The diseases he focus on are type-2 diabetes, cancer and schizophrenia as defects in signal transduction are a feature of all these diseases. Translational research is also an important focus and Pathway Therapeutics and Symansis are two companies that have spun out from the lab.The lab has been directly involved in several drug discovery programmes in collaboration with the Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre (ACSRC). These resulted in the devlopment of the PI 3-kinase inhibitor PWT33597 and its advancement to phase-1 clnical trial as an anticancer agent. Several PI 3-kinase drug discovery projects are ongoing aimed at developing second generation inhibitors, including one in collaboration with the Chinese National Centre for Drug Screening. We are also involved in drug development programmes on targets in the immunotherapy space.
