Graham studied Biochemistry at the University of Birmingham before completing a PhD in yeast pheromone signalling at Warwick. He continued to work at Warwick as a post-doc studying pro-hormone convertases before securing a 5-year independent fellowship funded through the NHS. This project enabled him to return to his interest of GPCRs. He progressed through the ranks at Warwick become an Associate Professor before leaving in 2015 to join the Department of Pharmacology at Cambridge, where he is also a Fellow of St John’s College. In 2020, he was promoted to a Readership in Receptor Pharmacology and was elected a Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society. His research group use a combination of pharmacological investigations and mathematical modelling to study factors that control agonist bias at GPCRs. These investigations have enabled him to foster strong collaborations with the pharmaceutical industry (GSK, Takeda and Firmenich) which have recently been enhanced though him being awarded a Royal Society Industry Fellowship to collaborate with AstraZeneca.
Publications
1. Shaw, W.M., Yamauchi, H., Mead, J., Gowers, G.F., Oling, D., Larsson, N., Wigglesworth, M.*, Ladds, G.* and Ellis, T.* (2019) Engineering a model cell for rational tuning of GPCR signalling Cell pii: S0092-8674(19)30205-3. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.02.023.
2. Bridge, L., Mead, J., Frattini, E., Winfield, I., and Ladds, G.(2018) Modelling and simulation of biased agonism dynamics at a G protein-coupled receptor. J. Theoretical. Biol.7: 44-65.
3. Weston, C., Winfield, I., Harris, M., Hodgson, R., Shah, A., Dowell, S.J., Moarec, J-C, Woodlock, D.A., Reynolds, C.A., Poyner, D.R., Watkins, H.A. and Ladds, G. (2016) RAMP-directed G protein signaling specificity for the calcitonin gene-related peptide family of receptors. J. Biol. Chem.91: 21925 .
4. Knight, A., Hemmings, J.L., Frenguelli, B.G., Dowell, S.J., Lochner, M. and Ladds, G. (2016) Discovery of Novel Adenosine Receptor Agonists that Exhibit Subtype Selectivity. J. Med Chem. 59: 947.
5. Weston, C., Li, J., Li, N., Barkan, G., Richards, G.O., Roberts, D., Skerry, T.M., Poyner, D., Pardamwar, M., Reynolds, C.A., Dowell, S., Willars, G. and Ladds, G. (2015) Modulation of glucagon receptor pharmacology by RAMP2. J. Biol. Chem. 290: 23009.
Investigator Biography
Graham studied Biochemistry at the University of Birmingham before completing a PhD in yeast pheromone signalling with John Davey at Warwick. He continued to work at Warwick as a post-doc studying pro-hormone convertases before securing a 5-year independent fellowship funded through the NHS. This project enabled him to return to his interest of GPCRs. He was appointed a lecturer at Warwick in 2006. In 2015 he was appointed to a lectureship in the Pharmacology Department, the University of Cambridge. He is a full member of the British Pharmacology Society and regularly attends meetings both in the UK and Australia. He has a long-standing collaboration with Dr Simon Dowell at GlaxoSmithKline. His group is interested in RAMP-mediated signalling bias of family B GPCRs.