Gurdyal Besra

Education

Besra was educated at Newcastle University where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree 1987[8] followed by a PhD for studies on the lipids of the leprosy bacillus in 1990.[9]

Research and career

Besra's research on tuberculosis has made many ground-breaking discoveries in our understanding of Mycobacterium tuberculosis cell wall assembly.[1] The cell wall of M. tuberculosis is very distinctive, differing from other bacteria in containing an exceptional amount of unique lipids and sugars.[1] In unravelling and characterising the proteins involved in cell wall biosynthesis, he aims to find good drug targets, which can then be further exploited using specialised assays, screens and structural biology, to identify new molecules for hit-to-lead programmes for tuberculosis.[1]

Besra has been at the forefront in the discovery of M. tuberculosis T-cell lipid antigens and the elucidation of the CD1 antigen presentation pathway.[1] He is also exploring the immunotherapeutic potential of glycosyl ceramides and synthetic small molecules with colleagues against a wide range of tumours and infectious diseases, where it is important to fine tune the hosts immune response through the CD1 pathway.[1]

Awards and honours

Besra was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2019[1] and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 2013.[1] He was awarded the Jeremy R. Knowles medal in 2014 by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC).[1][2]

References
  1. Anon (2019). "Professor Gurdyal Besra FMedSci FRS". royalsociety.org. London: Royal Society. Archived from the original on 2019-04-24. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
    “All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” --Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies at the Wayback Machine (archived 2016-11-11)
  2. https://www.rsc.org/ScienceAndTechnology/Awards/JeremyKnowlesAward/2014-Winner.asp
  3. Gurdyal Besra publications indexed by Google Scholar
  4. Waller, R. F.; Keeling, P. J.; Donald, R. G. K.; Striepen, B.; Handman, E.; Lang-Unnasch, N.; Cowman, A. F.; Besra, G. S.; Roos, D. S.; McFadden, G. I. (1998). "Nuclear-encoded proteins target to the plastid in Toxoplasma gondii and Plasmodium falciparum". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 95 (21): 12352–12357. doi:10.1073/pnas.95.21.12352. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 22835. PMID 9770490.
  5. Gurdyal Besra publications from Europe PubMed Central
  6. Gurdyal Besra publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  7. Gurdyal Besra on Twitter
  8. Gurdyal Besra's ORCID 0000-0002-5605-0395
  9. Besra, Gurdyal Singh (1990). Studies on the lipids of the leprosy bacillus. ncl.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Newcastle upon Tyne. OCLC 557262768. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.303125.
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