Fellow

Dave Stuart is a MRC Research Professor, University of Oxford. He is a world leader in structural biology, distinguished by contributions to viral crystallography. Since his 1989 Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus structure he has extended the complexity of known structures with several milestone determinations; notably of bluetongue virus core and PRD1 (the first structure of an enveloped virus), providing the bedrock for advances in understanding viral assembly, replication and infection. Dave Stuart has also determined many crystal structures of proteins, each providing a snapshot of biology at work, often with direct biomedical significance (for example tumour necrosis factor a molecule that has cropped up in several citations today). An example of his commitment to exploiting the clinical relevance of his approach is his series of structures of HIV reverse transcriptase. Despite severe technical challenges Dave Stuart inspired a group to generate data to lead inhibitor design through to a new series of non-nucleoside inhibitors. Although many of the viruses he has worked on do not infect humans, his results on these model systems have generated technological and mechanistic insights directly transferable to human viruses. In 1999 his determination to interface pro-actively with medical research led to his co-founding the Division of Structural Biology in the Department of Clinical Medicine, Oxford. Dave Stuart has been a tireless, effective, advocate for biological and biomedical sciences in synchrotron radiation. Finally he has been seminal to the paradigm shift towards applying the technologies of ‘structural genomics’ to biomedical ends.