Dundee academic honoured for contribution to drug safety

The University of Dundee’s Professor Roland Wolf has been awarded the Sir James Black Medal by the Royal Society of Edinburgh for his outstanding work in helping to ensure the safety of drugs used to treat a wide variety of diseases.

The RSE recognises excellence across a diverse range of fields through its annual medals programme. The Sir James Black Medal is the RSE’s major prize for life sciences researchers in Scotland.

Professor Wolf is Chair in Molecular Pharmacology at Dundee’s School of Medicine. His primary research interests are understanding the pathways which determine the sensitivity of cells to drugs, environmental agents, and chemical toxins.

Professor Wolf’s work has transformed this area and has influenced the field of drug pharmacology hugely, developing the novel fields of pharmacogenetics/pharmacogenomics. In addition, he has been actively involved in the development of the life sciences and biotechnology, in Scotland and worldwide.

The local community has been at the heart of Professor Wolf’s work since he joined the University in 1993. He received generous funding from the Ninewells Cancer Campaign over the years and was a past winner of the Dundee Rosebowl in recognition of his efforts in enhancing the prestige of the city.

Professor Wolf said, “Although this is a personal award, my research would not have been possible without the contributions of numerous others, including all of those who have worked in my lab, the many collaborators as well as some outstanding scientists who have given advice over the years.

“I would also like to acknowledge the enormous support I have received from the ICRF, now Cancer Research UK, and the community in Dundee. In a sense this is an award for the whole city, because the people here have played such a big role in backing my research.

“My major interest has always been how humans respond to drugs and how they metabolise them, as well as how different drugs react with each other. Along with my colleagues, I have been working to find out why some individuals react badly to certain drugs. Our goal is to take research from the lab to the clinical environment and find the right drug at the right dose for the right patient.”

Professor Wolf has held the position of Research Director at the University’s Medical Research Institute and was Honorary Director at the Cancer Research UK Molecular Pharmacology Unit. In addition, he was a founder and the Scientific Director of CXR Biosciences (now Concept Life Sciences), based in Dundee.

He has published more than 500 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, which have been cited more than 28,000 times. He has been a member of numerous national and international committees and advisory panels in academia, government, and industry.

Awarded an OBE in the 2010 New Year Honours List, Professor Wolf is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce and the British Toxicology Society.

He is also a recipient of the Gerhard Zbinden Award for contributions to the area of drug and chemical safety, the ISSX European Scientific Achievement Award, the Scottish Enterprise Award for Leading Individual Contribution to Life Sciences in Scotland and the John Barnes award from the British Society of Toxicology. In 2019 he was named recipient of the R.T. Williams Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award from the International Society for the Study of Xenobiotics (ISSX).