A biochemical engineer who spent five decades bringing complex scientific research to the wider world, Peter Dunnill was a pioneer both in his industrial vision for his field and as a passionate communicator on ways to tackle the most pressing problems in global health.
His understanding of the potential impact of biopharmaceuticals and biochemical engineering on patients and on society as a whole drew him to work that broke new ground in the laboratory and changed lives outside it.
His early research included the large-scale isolation of enzymes and commercial production of semisynthetic antibiotics — studies that formed the basis for today’s routine cholesterol testing and, at one point, 80 per cent of the world’s production of penicillin.
Later he would pioneer academicindustrial research and training at University College London, where he spent almost all his academic career, and speed the means of translating discoveries into safe, effective and affordable therapies.
His mission was in no small part inspired by his own misfortune: as a teenager he suffered serious spinal damage after a tuberculosis infection, which left him with limited movement and subject to considerable pain. That did not stop him working tirelessly, right up until the day of his death, to explore and explain any issue that touched his broad expertise. In recent weeks it had been the production and distribution of swine flu vaccines, with Dunnill spending an hour a time finding pain-free positions from which to make telephone conference calls.
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Peter Dunnill was born in 1938 in Harrow, northwest London, and grew up in nearby Kenton where his father, a pharmacist, was manager of the Co-op. After failing the 11-plus he completed his secondary schooling at Willesden Technical College. Extracurricular study, including self-taught French and German, helped him to win a place to study chemistry at UCL.
A PhD in protein crystallography followed at the Royal Institution, under the Nobel prize-winning physicist Sir Lawrence Bragg and David Phillips (later Lord Phillips), a founding father of structural biology. His research on the structures of proteins led to his appointment in 1964 as a lecturer at UCL. His studies into how to extract large quantities of enzymes from cells — to be used as catalysts to speed up biological processes — included the first successful large-scale isolation of the cholesterol oxidase. This enzyme allows the break-up of cholesterol cells into components that can be quantified, paving the way for the clinical cholesterol tests now used throughout the world. In collaboration with Beechams and Professor Malcolm Lilly, Dunnill also devised the basis for the mass production of semi-synthetic penicillins. The technology was to become a mainstay for the global manufacture of this key class of antibiotics.
As a scientist with a precise understanding of molecular biology and its industrial application, Dunnill became a guiding figure in the formative years of biochemical engineering. In the late 1980s he identified the need for trials of small industrial units to find ways of producing the new biopharmaceuticals — recombinant proteins — for direct therapeutic use. Genetically engineered organisms were grown in fermentation vats, with cells broken open and proteins extracted, to be bottled ready for the use of patients.
Dunnill’s advocacy of biochemical engineering to advance global health was echoed by two UCL provosts, Sir James Lighthill and Sir Derek Roberts. The result was one of the world’s most sophisticated training and research facilities, the Advanced Centre for Biochemical Engineering, which opened in 1991 and brought Britain to the forefront of academic biopharmaceutical R&D. In the wake of its success UCL set up the first Department of Biochemical Engineering in 1998, with Dunnill as its chairman.
From the age of 18 Dunnill had battled with the spinal damage caused during his recovery from tuberculosis, which left him unable to sit, unless on stools or high chairs, and often left him conducting work lying down.
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Yet with his wife, Pat, at his side, he managed to maintain a ferocious work rate. Their reconfigured Citro?n Safari allowed him to lie in the back on the drive to work from their home in Finchley, and while travel was difficult, it did not stop him from playing a key role in shaping domestic and international policy on bioscience research.
He acted as an adviser to several government departments, including on the provision of blood plasma fractionation services in the late 1970s, and several other inquiries.
In 1994 he was elected to the council of Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the Government’s Foresight Panel charged with looking for future scientific challenges. More recently he worked on the Cooksey Report (2003), which investigated ways of improving commercial and medical exploitation of basic life sciences research.
He wrote prolifically on subjects ranging from protein and enzyme work to studies of the processing of stem cells for regenerative medicine therapy and the development of DNA-based vaccines.
He was also an enthusiastic and valued speaker, and a strong proponent of the academic’s responsibility for public engagement as well as research. From the lecture hall (where he once greeted students with “the future” by holding up a plastic bag; a decade later it had become key to making biopharmaceutical processes more affordable) to the press conference, Dunnill’s voice was always the one to which people turned. Right up to his death, he was heavily involved in influencing the international debate on swine flu, inoculation strategies and the provision of adequate quantities of vaccines to include the developing world.
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Dunnill received numerous awards and honours, including fellowships from the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Institution of Chemical Engineers, UCL and the Royal Academy of Engineering. He was appointed OBE in 1999. Ever the self-effacing gentleman academic, he saw the many medals as compliments to be enjoyed but not allowed to divert from the work in hand.
Dunnill is survived by Pat, his wife of 47 years.
Professor Peter Dunnill, OBE, biochemical engineer, was born on May 20, 1938. He died of cancer on August 10, 2009, aged 71