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Department of Pharmacology

 

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Prof. Dermot Cooper (retired)

E-Mail: dmfc2@cam.ac.uk

Fax: +44 1223 334100

 

Keywords

Cellular signalling, cancer, adenylyl cyclase, protein kinase, cyclic AMP, AKAP, Akinase anchoring proteins

Investigator biography:

I have worked on cyclic AMP since my Ph.D. on cAMP and lipolysis in Biochemistry in Bangor, North Wales. I then did a postdoc in Sussex (Biochemistry group, School of Biological Sciences) on ACTH – effects on adrenal steroidogenesis and control of its secretion by CRH. I went to the US – NIH (Bethesda, MD) in 1977 to join the lab of the later Nobel Laureate, Martin Rodbell, to work on G-proteins. My efforts were largely focused on proving that Gi was an entity that differed from Gs. I took a faculty position in the Pharmacology department of the University of Colorado School of Medicine (1982; becoming full Professor in 1991), where I initiated work on the impact of Calcium signaling on adenylyl cyclases. I spent a sabbatical year (1989) at the University of Geneva learning the issues surrounding Calcium imaging and ion channels, and a sabbatical (1995/96) in the Pharmacology department in Cambridge, with Robin Irvine, pursuing questions on inositol phosphates, susceptibilities of ACs to membrane potential, as well as Calcium imaging with aequorin-tagged ACs in Padua with Sarino Rizzuto. In 2002 I moved my lab to Pharmacology in Cambridge, where we continue to focus on the organizational properties of ACs and their association with Calcium channels.