Laureation address for Dr Christopher Lipinski - by Professor Mike Ferguson

Chancellor I have the honour to present for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, Dr Christopher Andrew Lipinski.

Dr Lipinski is one of the foremost experts in medicinal chemistry and a household name in the Pharmaceutical Industry and in academia.

I am pleased to tell you that this distinguished scientist has intimate links with the city of Dundee. He was born February 1944 in Fernbrae Nursing Home, Perth Road, Dundee. This is right next door to the Principal's house, possibly an omen of things to come, because, 61 years later, he returned to Dundee when he graciously agreed to be a Scientific Advisor to our Drug Discovery for Tropical Diseases initiative.

Chris lived in Coupar Angus until four years old and Chingford, Essex, until nine before emigrating with his family via Canada to the United States - thus deftly escaping the dreaded 11+ exams of the British educational system! Nevertheless, the UK may pride itself with giving Chris his educational start in life. His life and achievements are a great example of how the enforced Polish Diaspora of the second world war spread talent across the world, in some cases into environments ripe to develop and nurture it - a silver lining to a very dark cloud indeed and a tribute to the resilience of the Polish nation.

Chris was educated at San Francisco State College and The University of California, Berkeley, where he obtained a PhD in physical organic chemistry in 1968. He joined Pfizer in 1970 where for 20 years he supervised medicinal chemistry laboratories working on gastrointestinal disease and diabetes. During this time he developed a profound interest in the shape and physical properties of drugs, the design of bioisosteres and quantitative structure activity relationships, or Q-SAR in the jargon of the industry. From 1990 onwards he applied this wealth of experience and knowledge to predicting chemical features that would make drugs more 'bioavailable' or, in the words of the Heineken Corporation, 'more likely to get to the parts that other drugs cannot reach'. This is, to put it mildly, rather important since a drug may be fantastic in the test tube but useless in the body if it cannot get into the bloodstream. Hundreds of millions of pounds of research have been wasted by not taking this adequately into account during the drug discovery phase. Are we any better at spotting these 'bioavailability' problems in good time today? The answer is yes and the reason is entirely due to the work of Dr Lipinski. Like all paradigm-shifting science, the solution is elegant and, in retrospect, conceptually simple - so simple that it takes a special kind of person to spot it and develop the tools to exploit it. The concept is easy to understand. Like most things, the best way to predict the future is to look at the past. Chris used computational methods to analyse the properties of existing successful drugs and made the then-radical suggestion that most successful drugs of the future might be similar. He was able to refine this into five measurable physicochemical parameters and, in 1997, published a seminal paper setting out these parameters that are known throughout the world of medicinal chemistry as "Lipinski's rule of five". This jewel in the crown of his 210 publications and 17 US patents has revolutionised the process of drug discovery. Few could claim a greater influence over the global Pharmaceutical sector.

His contributions have, of course, been recognised by the award of many prestigious prizes, such as the 2004 Medicinal Chemistry Award of the American Chemical Society, the 2005 Hershberg Award and the 2006 Society of Biomolecular Science's Achievement Award for Innovation. Another measure of the influence of the man and his rules can be gauged by a Google search of both, which returns nearly half a million hits - pretty impressive - although, as his former colleague Robin Spencer points out, this is almost a thousand-fold fewer than for Madonna.

Robin and other friends from his Pfizer days comment on his kindness to others, his approachable character, down-to-earth manner and thriftiness - the latter outrageously associated by some with his Scottish origins! John LaMattina remembers meeting Chris in 1977 when he joined the Lipinski medicinal chemistry team. "My first impression", he says, "was that Chris was not a great dresser - even by Chemistry standards! In addition, he was a bit of a klutz in the lab, often inadvertently banging his head into clamps in the fume hood or walking into walls". I find it deeply encouraging to hear that a prize-winning scientific superstar was, at least once, a 'regular guy' like the rest of us. I should point out that John went on to eulogise about Chris's achievements and to describe how he had benefited from his association with Chris. John LaMattina is now President of Pfizer Global Research and Development - a position second only to Emperor of the Known Universe.

Dr Lipinski retired from Pfizer in 2002. His colleagues laugh when this is mentioned because he clearly does not know the meaning of the word retirement. A fact to which his dedicated wife, Nancy, can surely attest. His knowledge and insights are avidly sought and he is as busy now as ever before. He is still publishing influential papers. His 2004 Nature publication with Andrew Hopkins entitled "Navigating chemical space for biology and medicine", for example, was recently designated a "hot paper" for being so widely cited. He has chosen, in what we should call the independent phase of his career, rather than retirement, to help in areas of unmet medical need. For example, he serves on the scientific advisory board for the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development, the UK Medical Research Council Technology "drug discovery" effort and is the Wellcome Trust's representative on the University of Dundee's Drug Discovery for Tropical Diseases initiative. For the latter we are particularly grateful.

Vice-chancellor, I have the honour to invite you to confer upon Dr Christopher Andrew Lipinski the degree of Doctor of Laws.