Sir

Peter Barnes
Born
Peter John Barnes

1946 (age 77–78)
Birmingham, West Midlands
NationalityBritish
Alma materUniversity of Cambridge
University of Oxford Medical School
Known fortranslational research in asthma and COPD
AwardsFounding Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences 1998, Fellow of the Royal Society 2007, Member of the Academia Europaea 2012
Scientific career
FieldsRespiratory scientist and clinician
InstitutionsNational Heart & Lung Institute
Imperial College London
Royal Brompton Hospital, London
Websiteimperial.ac.uk/people/p.j.barnes

Sir Peter John Barnes, FRCP, FCCP, FMedSci, FRS (born 29 October 1946) is a British respiratory scientist and clinician, a specialist in the mechanisms and treatment of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).[1] He was Margaret Turner-Warwick Professor of Thoracic Medicine at the National Heart & Lung Institute,[2] previous head of respiratory medicine at Imperial College and honorary consultant physician at the Royal Brompton Hospital London.[3] He is one of the most highly cited scientists in the world [4]

Early life

Barnes was born in Birmingham and went to school at Leamington College. He won an open scholarship to St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in natural sciences (first-class honours) in 1969. He moved to the Clinical School University of Oxford, where he was a scholar and graduated BM, BCh in 1972.

Medical career

After qualifying in medicine, he undertook clinical training at the Radcliffe Infirmary Oxford, followed by posts in London at Brompton Hospital, Queen Square and UCH. In 1978 he moved to the Royal Postgraduate Medical School to undertake research in respiratory pharmacology and was awarded the degree of Doctor of Medicine(DM) from the University of Oxford. In 1981 he spent a year at the Cardiovascular Research Institute UCSF Medical Center. Returning to London, he worked as a senior registrar at Hammersmith Hospital and in 1982 was appointed consultant physician and clinical senior lecturer at RPMS. He then took up the newly created chair of clinical pharmacology at the NHLI in 1985, which was subsequently incorporated as a postgraduate institute into Imperial College and became an honorary consultant physician at Royal Brompton Hospital.[5]

In 1987 he was appointed to the established chair of thoracic medicine at NHLI and was head of respiratory medicine at Imperial College until 2017.[6]

Barnes was knighted in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to respiratory science.[7]

Research

His research initially focussed on adrenergic regulation of the airways, the role of endogenous catecholamines (particularly epinephrine), adrenergic receptors and the role of cholinergic neural mechanisms in asthma. He was the first to map the distribution of receptors in the lung using radioligand autoradiography.[8] His group investigated the role of neuropeptides in asthma and he proposed the axon reflex mechanism of asthma[9] Their investigation into the role of inflammatory mechanisms in asthma and the role of inflammatory mediators, lead to an understanding of how transcription factors, such as NF-κB, regulate the expression of multiple inflammatory genes in the airways and how glucocorticosteroids suppress inflammation by switching off these transcriptional mechanisms.[10] His research explored mechanisms of severe asthma and in particular steroid-resistance in asthma, identifying several molecular mechanisms. He also investigated how β2-agonists and corticosteroids interact as these are the most commonly used drug therapies for asthma. His research group has also investigated inflammatory mechanisms in COPD, using the same approaches that had been used in asthma.[11] An important achievement was to elucidate the molecular mechanism for the anti-inflammatory effects of glucocorticosteroids in asthma through the recruitment of histone deacetylase 2(HDAC2) to activated inflammatory genes, thereby reversing the histone acetylation that is involved in inflammatory gene activation.[12] His research also investigated why glucocorticosteroids are ineffective in suppressing inflammation in COPD, demonstrating that this is due to decreased activity and expression of HDAC2[13] as a result of oxidative stress through tyrosine nitration and phosphorylation via PI3K-δ. He also showed that theophylline was able to restore HDAC2 and reverse steroid resistance in COPD by selectively inhibiting oxidant-activated PI3Kδ.[14] He also pioneered the use of non-invasive markers to monitor inflammation in the airways and particularly exhaled nitric oxide, which is increased in asthma and reduced by steroid therapy.[15] His research has had a major impact on current understanding of asthma and COPD mechanisms and how current therapies for these diseases work. This has identified several novel targets for therapy.

As a result of his research on steroid-resistance he co-founded (together with Garth Rapeport and Kazuhiro Ito) a spin-out company within Imperial College called RespiVert in 2007,[16] which has discovered novel inhaled therapies that are now in clinical development for treatment of severe asthma and COPD since the company was acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 2010.[17]

Publications

Barnes is the author of over 1,500 publications in peer-reviewed journals[18] and is one of the most highly cited scientists in the world.[19] He has edited or co-edited over 50 books on asthma, COPD and respiratory pharmacology. His Web of Science h-index is over 200 with over 150,000 citations.

Family life

He married Olivia Harvard-Watts, a psychotherapist, in 1976 and they have three sons: Adam (born 1978), Toby (born 1983) and Julian (born 1988).[20]

Honours and awards

References

  1. ↑ "Peter Barnes". Google scholar. Archived from the original on 8 November 2017. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
  2. ↑ "Curriculum vitae". 23 October 2023.
  3. ↑ "Professor Peter Barnes". For healthcare professionals. Royal Brompton Hospital. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
  4. ↑ "World Online Ranking of Best Medical Scientists".
  5. ↑ "Professor Peter Barnes". For healthcare professionals. Royal Brompton Hospital. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
  6. ↑ "Curriculum vitae". 23 October 2023.
  7. ↑ "No. 64082". The London Gazette (Supplement). 17 June 2023. p. B2.
  8. ↑ Barnes PJ, Basbaum CB, Nadel JA, Roberts JM. Localization of ß-adrenoceptors in mammalian lung by light microscopic autoradiography. Nature 1982; 299:444–447. PMID 6289123
  9. ↑ Barnes PJ. Asthma as an axon reflex. Lancet 1986;i:242–245.PMID 2418322
  10. ↑ Barnes PJ, Karin M. Nuclear factor-κB: a pivotal transcription factor in chronic inflammatory diseases. N Engl J Med 1997;336:1066–1071.PMID 9091804
  11. ↑ Barnes P. J. "Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease". N Engl J Med 2000;343:269–280
  12. ↑ Ito K, Barnes P J, Adcock I M. "Glucocorticoid receptor recruitment of histone deacetylase 2 inhibits IL-1β-induced histone H4 acetylation on lysines 8 and 12". Mol Cell Biol, 2000:20:6891-6903 PMID 10958685
  13. ↑ Ito K, Ito M, Elliott W M, Cosio B, Caramori G, Kon O M, Barczyk A, Hayashi M, Adcock I M, Hogg J C, Barnes P J. "Decreased histone deacetylase activity and severity of chronic obstuctive pulmonary disease". N Engl J Med, 2005;352:1967–1976. PMID 15860753
  14. ↑ To M, Ito K, Kizawa Y, Failla M, Ito M, Kusama T, Elliot M, Hogg J C, Adcock I M, Barnes P J. "Targeting phosphoinositide-3-kinase-δ with theophylline reverses corticosteroid insensitivity in COPD". Am J Resp Crit Care Med 2010;182:897–904. PMID 20224070
  15. ↑ Kharitonov S A, Yates D, Robbins R A, Logan-Sinclair R, Shinebourne E, Barnes P J. "Increased nitric oxide in exhaled air of asthmatic patients". Lancet 1994;343:133–135. PMID 7904001
  16. ↑ "Home". respivert.com. Archived from the original on 4 November 2016. Retrieved 2 November 2012.
  17. ↑ "J&J buys UK biotech RespiVert". June 2010.
  18. ↑ http://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/p.j.barnes Publication list
  19. ↑ "Home". highlycited.com.
  20. ↑ "Who's Who home". www.ukwhoswho.com. Archived from the original on 6 December 2007.
  21. ↑ "Croonian Lectures (Sadleir Trust)" (PDF). Royal College of Physicians. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 February 2015.
  22. ↑ Barnes, Peter J (7 August 2013). "Interview: Interview with Peter J Barnes". Therapeutic Delivery. 4 (8): 901–903. doi:10.4155/tde.13.65. ISSN 2041-5990. PMID 23919469.

External sources

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