He earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree[4] from Wolfson College, Oxford, where he also won a Graduate Scholarship and was later Junior Research Fellow, for work carried out in the Dyson Perrins Laboratory on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalyzed phosphoryl transfer reactions under the supervision of Gordon Lowe FRS.

E2MATE/PGL2001 was well tolerated and for endometriosis first clinical trials showed that local endometrial STS could be reduced by 91% by a single dose of only 4 mg/per week of the drug alone and 96% in combination with a progestin.

In randomised phase II trials using Irosustat vs the current standard of care (megestrol acetate) in recurrent/metastatic post-menopausal endometrial cancer patients results showed clinical activity and a good safety profile.

Sterix Ltd pioneered inter alia the first human clinical trials of a steroid sulfatase inhibitor in breast cancer patients [16] and was acquired by the French Ipsen Group in 2004.

[31] It has been demonstrated that oral treatment with the STS inhibitor Irosustat alleviates the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease in a murine model, indicating that the drug passes the blood–brain barrier.

In Chemical Biology he has elucidated the stereochemistry of numerous enzyme-catalysed phosphoryl and nucleotidyl transfer reactions using isotopically chiral substrates and DNA fragments.

He has applied organic synthesis techniques in novel ways using carbohydrate, cyclitol and phosphorus chemistry to design modulators of cellular signal transduction processes that mobilize intracellular Ca2+ through second messengers.

[46] In 2022 Potter was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science honoris causa by the University of Bath[47] and was also elected to an Honorary Fellowship of the British Pharmacological Society (HonFBPhS).