Department of Pharmacology, University College London
[citation needed] Most of the people involved in the development of quantitative analysis of drug-receptor interactions worked at some time in UCL's Departments of Pharmacology, or of Physiology or of Biophysics.
After graduating in medicine from Aberdeen, Cushny had studied in Berne, Würzburg, and Strasbourg, where he became Assistant to the famed Oswald Schmiedeberg.
He introduced the Cushny myograph, an ingenious arrangement of counterbalanced levers that allowed the faithful recording of the rate and force of contraction of the rapidly beating animal heart.
The data he gathered on the exact relationship between agonist concentration and response, and on how this changed in the presence of a competitive antagonist, were published in two classic papers in the Journal of Physiology in 1926,.
[10][11] But he failed to work out a method for analysing properly the results of experiments with antagonists: that had to wait for his successor, Heinz Schild.
Clark's book The Mode of Action of Drugs on Cells[12] (Williams & Wilkins, 1933) is a classic and the following quotation from it set the tone for the department for many years.
While at UCL Clark wrote the first edition of his textbook Applied Pharmacology[13] in 1923, a book that was to be updated by two of his successors as Head of department, first by H.O.
While at UCL Verney discovered the antidiuretic hormone and also the mechanism by which structures in the brain sense minute changes in blood osmotic pressure.
[3] Gaddum was also a master of bioassay which was then the preferred, and usually the only, way to determine the concentrations of biologically active molecules such as labile neurotransmitters and the neuropeptides.
Winton ran the department through the difficult war years when the Medical School was evacuated to Leatherhead, Surrey.
The 6th edition, 1968 was written by Olof J.C. Lippold and F.R Winton[18] Heinz Otto Schild (1906–1984)[19] held the Chair of Pharmacology from 1961 to 1973.
By good fortune, Schild had been accepted as a visiting worker by Sir Henry Dale and was in England when the National Socialists came to power in Germany.
So began his long association with UCL, interrupted only by his bizarre internment on the Isle of Man as an ‘enemy alien’ at the outbreak of the Second World War.
[3] He built on the work of Clark and Gaddum on competitive antagonism, by realising that the null method was key to extraction of physical equilibrium constants from simple functional experiments.
Medical students were able to enter its final year and Schild, who never lost sight of the roots of the subject in medicine, was delighted that many took this opportunity.
Sir James Whyte Black OM FRS FRSE FRCP (1924–2010) held the Chair of Pharmacology from 1973 to 1978.
Jim Black and Heinz Schild knew each other well because Schild had acted as a consultant to the then Smith, Kline & French company during the time when Black was leading the team that developed the histamine receptor antagonists,[22] H2 antagonists, which reduce secretion of gastric acid and which, at the time, transformed the treatment of gastric ulcers.
Another important change was a sharp reduction in the number of experiments with animal tissues undertaken by medical students during their course in pharmacology.
To the regret of his Departmental staff, Black found that only the pharmaceutical industry could provide the facilities needed for the work he wished to pursue, and in 1978 he left to join the Wellcome Foundation.
Black was knighted in 1981 and in 1988 he got the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Gertrude B. Elion and George H. Hitchings for their work on drug development.
These appointments greatly strengthened the interests and achievements of the department in fundamental aspects of pharmacology, particularly the study of ion channels and receptors.
During the 1980s the traditional role of Heads of department was replaced by rotating headships that were no longer associated necessarily with an established chair.
His work, with statistician Alan Hawkes and Bert Sakmann (Nobel prize 1991) established the department as the world leader in the theory and experiment of single ion channels.
Brown's appointment was intended initially to be the start of a 5-year rotating headship, but when Colquhoun's turn became due, he decided that the job of Head of department would not allow enough time to do the algebra and program development with which he was involved.
His tenure saw a second merger, this time with the Department of Pharmacology at the Royal Free Medical School, headed by Professor Annette Dolphin, FRS.
[29] In 2021, Professor Schorge succeeded Trevor Smart as head of the Research Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology.
The distinguished vice-president of the University of Manchester, Richard Alan North FRS, was asked to assess several options for the reorganisation of the Faculty of Life Sciences.
On 24 May 2007 Grant persuaded the Academic Board to authorise him to act on its behalf[30] and on 13 June 2007 the Department of Pharmacology was disestablished, after a century of distinction and innovation.
(b) The size of the merged department of Neurosciences, Physiology and Pharmacology means less interaction between staff, and less collegiate spirit.
[31] On the positive side, UCL's current provost, Michael Arthur, has put much emphasis on the quality of teaching, and maintaining its connections with research.
