Antony Giuseppe Galione (born 13 September 1963) is a British pharmacologist. He is a professor and
Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of one of the predecessors of Glaxo ...
senior investigator in the Department of Pharmacology at the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
.
Early life and education
Antony Giuseppe Galione was born on 13 September 1963 in
Chelmsford
Chelmsford () is a city in the City of Chelmsford district in the county of Essex, England. It is the county town of Essex and one of three cities in the county, along with Southend-on-Sea and Colchester. It is located north-east of London a ...
, England, to Angelo and Margaret Galione. He was educated at
Felsted School
(Keep your Faith)
, established =
, closed =
, type = Public schoolIndependent day and boarding
, religion = Church of England
, president =
, head_label = Headmaster
, head = Chris Townsend
, r_head_l ...
in
Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...
and
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...
Michael Berridge
Sir Michael John Berridge (22 October 1938 – 13 February 2020) was a British physiologist and biochemist.
Born and raised in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), he was best known for his work on cellular transmembrane signalling, in pa ...
.
Research and career
Galione's research investigates calcium signalling. HC Lee established the concept of multiple calcium mobilising messengers which link cell surface stimuli to release of internal calcium stores, while Zhu, Evans and co-workers identified their target
two-pore channel
Two-pore channels (TPCs) are eukaryotic intracellular voltage-gated and ligand gated cation selective ion channels. There are two known paralogs in the human genome, TPC1s and TPC2s. In humans, TPC1s are sodium selective and TPC2s conduct so ...
s (TPCs) and
organelle
In cell biology, an organelle is a specialized subunit, usually within a cell, that has a specific function. The name ''organelle'' comes from the idea that these structures are parts of cells, as organs are to the body, hence ''organelle,'' the ...
s. This has enhanced our understanding of how calcium as a ubiquitous cellular regulator may control a myriad of cellular processes with precision.
Galione established that
cyclic ADP-ribose
Cyclic ADP Ribose, frequently abbreviated as cADPR, is a cyclic adenine nucleotide (like cAMP) with two phosphate groups present on 5' OH of the adenosine (like ADP), further connected to another ribose at the 5' position, which, in turn, closes t ...
regulates calcium-induced calcium release and globalisation of calcium signals, and that Nicotinic acid adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NAADP) is a ubiquitous trigger for initiating and co-ordinating calcium signals, often involving communication between organelles at contact sites.
By developing novel pharmacological, molecular and physiological approaches, he has demonstrated that these messengers and their targets regulate many fundamental
pathophysiological
Pathophysiology ( physiopathology) – a convergence of pathology with physiology – is the study of the disordered physiological processes that cause, result from, or are otherwise associated with a disease or injury. Pathology is th ...
cellular processes as diverse as
Ebola virus disease
Ebola, also known as Ebola virus disease (EVD) and Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF), is a viral hemorrhagic fever in humans and other primates, caused by ebolaviruses. Symptoms typically start anywhere between two days and three weeks after becom ...
infection,
fertilisation
Fertilisation or fertilization (see spelling differences), also known as generative fertilisation, syngamy and impregnation, is the fusion of gametes to give rise to a new individual organism or offspring and initiate its development. Proce ...
and
embryology
Embryology (from Greek ἔμβρυον, ''embryon'', "the unborn, embryo"; and -λογία, '' -logia'') is the branch of animal biology that studies the prenatal development of gametes (sex cells), fertilization, and development of embryos and ...
T cell
A T cell is a type of lymphocyte. T cells are one of the important white blood cells of the immune system and play a central role in the adaptive immune response. T cells can be distinguished from other lymphocytes by the presence of a T-cell r ...
lysosome
A lysosome () is a membrane-bound organelle found in many animal cells. They are spherical vesicles that contain hydrolytic enzymes that can break down many kinds of biomolecules. A lysosome has a specific composition, of both its membrane prot ...
s as calcium stores mobilised by NAADP has identified an entirely new signalling role for these organelles in health and disease.
Galione served as head of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford from 2006 until 2015.
Novartis
Novartis AG is a Swiss-American multinational pharmaceutical corporation based in Basel, Switzerland and
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States (global research).name="novartis.com">https://www.novartis.com/research-development/research-loc ...
Prize from the
British Pharmacological Society
The British Pharmacological Society is the primary UK learned society for pharmacologists concerned with research into drugs and the way they work. Members work in academia, industry, regulatory agencies and the health services, and many are medi ...