Professor Alan Warren FMedSci

Alan Warren heads a rather surprisingly long list of new fellows whose surnames begin with the letter W. He is Professor of Haematology at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. He is an outstanding academic haematologist who has established a considerable international reputation. A major early contribution was a publication in Cell that demonstrated that the T-cell oncogene LMO-2 is essential for the normal development of all haematopoietic lineages. He has subsequently contributed to a substantial body of work using molecular, cellular and transgenic techniques that has dissected the molecular pathogenisis of leukaemia, mostly using mouse models. He then took the brave step of moving fields and embarked on a series of structural studies, focusing on proteins important for leukaemogenesis and haematopoiesis. This proved a remarkable success. He solved the structure of the AML-1 DNA-binding domain complexed to CBF and in doing so beat substantial competing groups in the United States. Since then he has elucidated the mechanism by which this complex binds DNA, and has recently solved the structure of the protein that is defected in the Shwachman-Diamond syndrome. Despite these major achievements Professor Warren also directs a specialist clinic looking after patients with bone marrow failure syndromes and myelodysplasia and acute myeloid leukaemia. In summary, Professor Warren is an extremely talented clinician scientist