English biochemist (born 1951)
Sir Gregory Paul Winter
CBE
FRS
FMedSci (born 14 April 1951)
[6]
[7] is a
Nobel Prize -winning
English
molecular biologist best known for his work on the therapeutic use of
monoclonal antibodies . His research career has been based almost entirely at the MRC
Laboratory of Molecular Biology and the MRC
Centre for Protein Engineering , in Cambridge, England.
He is credited with having invented techniques to both
humanize (1986) and, later, to fully humanize using
phage display , antibodies for therapeutic uses.
[5]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13] Previously, antibodies had been derived from mice, which made them difficult to use in human therapeutics because the human immune system had anti-mouse reactions to them.
[6]
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
[18] For these developments Winter was awarded the 2018
Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with
George Smith and
Frances Arnold .
[19]
[20]
He is a Fellow of
Trinity College, Cambridge and was appointed
Master of Trinity College, Cambridge on 2 October 2012, remaining in office until 2019. From 2006 to 2011, he was Deputy Director of the
Laboratory of Molecular Biology ,
Medical Research Council , acting Director from 2007 to 2008 and Head of the Division of Protein and Nucleic Acids Chemistry from 1994 to 2006. He was also Deputy Director of the MRC Centre for Protein Engineering from 1990 to its closure in 2010.
[21]
[22]
Education
Winter was educated at the
Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne .
[6] He went on to study
Natural Sciences at the
University of Cambridge graduating from
Trinity College, Cambridge in 1973. He was awarded a
PhD degree, from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, for research on the
amino acid sequence of
tryptophanyl tRNA synthetase from the bacterium
Bacillus stearothermophilus in 1977
[23] supervised by
Brian S. Hartley .
[24] Later, Winter completed a term of post-doctoral fellowship at
Imperial College London , and another at the Institute of genetics in University of Cambridge.
[25]
Career and research
Following his PhD, Winter completed
postdoctoral research at the
Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.
[26]
[27] He continued to specialise in protein and nucleic acid sequencing and became a Group Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in 1981. He became interested in the idea that all antibodies have the same basic structure, with only small changes making them specific for one target.
Georges J. F. Köhler and
César Milstein had won the 1984 Nobel Prize for their work at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in discovering a method to isolate and reproduce individual, or monoclonal, antibodies from among the multitude of different antibody proteins that the immune system makes to seek and destroy foreign invaders attacking the body.
[28] These monoclonal antibodies had limited application in human medicine, because mouse monoclonal antibodies are rapidly inactivated by the human immune response, which prevents them from providing long-term benefits.
Winter pioneered a technique to "humanise" mouse monoclonal antibodies; a technique used in the development of
Campath-1H by the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and University of Cambridge scientists.
[29] This antibody now looks promising for the treatment of multiple sclerosis. Humanized monoclonal antibodies form the majority of antibody-based drugs on the market today and include several blockbuster antibodies, such as
Keytruda .
Winter founded
Cambridge Antibody Technology in 1989,
[30]
[31] and Bicycle Therapeutics.
[32]
[33]
He worked on the Scientific Advisory Board of Covagen ,
[34]
[35] (now part of
Cilag ) and is also the chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board for Biosceptre International Limited.
In 1989, Winter was a founder of
Cambridge Antibody Technology , one of the early commercial biotech companies involved in antibody engineering. One of the most successful antibody drugs developed was HUMIRA (
adalimumab ), which was discovered by Cambridge Antibody Technology as D2E7, and developed and marketed by
Abbott Laboratories . HUMIRA, an antibody to
TNF alpha , was the world's first fully human antibody,
[36] which went on to become the world's top selling pharmaceutical with sales of over $18Bn in 2017
[37] Cambridge Antibody Technology was acquired by
AstraZeneca in 2006 for £702m.
[38]
In 2000, Winter founded Domantis to pioneer the use of domain antibodies, which use only the active portion of a full-sized antibody. Domantis was acquired by the pharmaceutical
GlaxoSmithKline in December 2006 for £230 million.
[4]
[39]
Winter subsequently founded another company, Bicycle Therapeutics Limited as a start up company which is developing very small protein mimics based on a covalently bonded
hydrophobic core .
[40]
Awards and honours
Greg Winter during Nobel press conference in Stockholm, December 2018
Winter was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1990
[41] and awarded the
Royal Medal by the society in 2011 "for his pioneering work in protein engineering and therapeutic monoclonal antibodies, and his contributions as an inventor and entrepreneur".
[42] He was given the
Scheele Award in 1994.
In 1995, Winter won several international awards including the
King Faisal International Prize for Medicine (Molecular Immunology) and in 1999, the Cancer Research Institute
William B. Coley Award . Winter was formerly the Joint Head of the Division of Protein and
Nucleic acid Chemistry-Biotechnology, and was Deputy Director,
[43] at the
Laboratory of Molecular Biology , Cambridge, an institution funded by the UK
Medical Research Council . He was also Deputy Director of the MRC's
Centre for Protein Engineering until its absorption into the Laboratory of Molecular Biology. He is a member of the Advisory Council for the
Campaign for Science and Engineering .
[44] Winter was appointed
Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1997 and
Knight Bachelor in 2004. He served as
Master of Trinity College, Cambridge from 2012 to 2019.
[45]
[46] In 2015 he received the
Wilhelm Exner Medal .
[47]
Along with
George Smith , Winter was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on 3 October 2018 for his work on phage displays for antibodies (while
Frances Arnold received the other half of the prize that same year "for the
directed evolution of enzymes").
[19] In 2020 he was featured on The Times' 'Science Power List'.
[48]
[49]
References
^
"EMBO MEMBER: Gregory P. Winter" . people.embo.org .
^
"Doctor Gregory P. WINTER | Jeantet" . 1 October 2017.
^
"Announcement of the Prince Mahidol Award 2016" . princemahidolaward.org. Archived from
the original on 14 November 2017. Retrieved 13 June 2017 .
^
a
b
"GSK snaps up Domantis to move into biotech field" . The Independent . 9 December 2006.
^
a
b The
Scientific Founders
Archived 13 September 2011 at the
Wayback Machine of Bicycle Therapeutics Ltd. – Christian Heinis and Sir Greg Winter, FRS.
^
a
b
c
"WINTER, Sir Gregory (Paul)" .
Who's Who . Vol. 2016 (online
Oxford University Press ed.). A & C Black. (Subscription or
UK public library membership required.)
^
"Sir Gregory P. Winter – Facts – 2018" . NobelPrize.org . Nobel Media AB. 6 October 2018. Retrieved 6 October 2018 .
^
McCafferty, J. ; Griffiths, A.;
Winter, G. ;
Chiswell, D. (1990). "Phage antibodies: filamentous phage displaying antibody variable domains". Nature . 348 (6301): 552–554.
Bibcode :
1990Natur.348..552M .
doi :
10.1038/348552a0 .
PMID
2247164 .
S2CID
4258014 .
^
"Trinity College Cambridge" . Archived from
the original on 6 March 2012.
^
Gregory Winter's publications indexed by the
Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
^ Winter, G; Griffiths, A. D.; Hawkins, R. E.; Hoogenboom, H. R. (1994). "Making antibodies by phage display technology". Annual Review of Immunology . 12 : 433–455.
doi :
10.1146/annurev.iy.12.040194.002245 .
PMID
8011287 .
^ Griffiths, A. D.; Williams, S. C.; Hartley, O; Tomlinson, I. M.; Waterhouse, P; Crosby, W. L.; Kontermann, R. E.; Jones, P. T.; Low, N. M.; Allison, T. J. (1994).
"Isolation of high affinity human antibodies directly from large synthetic repertoires" . The EMBO Journal . 13 (14): 3245–60.
doi :
10.1002/j.1460-2075.1994.tb06626.x .
PMC
395221 .
PMID
8045255 .
^ Hoogenboom, H. R.; Griffiths, A. D.; Johnson, K. S.; Chiswell, D. J.; Hudson, P.; Winter, G. (1991).
"Multi-subunit proteins on the surface of filamentous phage: Methodologies for displaying antibody (Fab) heavy and light chains" . Nucleic Acids Research . 19 (15): 4133–4137.
doi :
10.1093/nar/19.15.4133 .
PMC
328552 .
PMID
1908075 .
^ Anon (2011).
"The inventor of humanized monoclonal antibodies and cofounder of Cambridge Antibody Technology, Greg Winter, muses on the future of antibody therapeutics and UK life science innovation" .
Nature Biotechnology . 29 (3): 190.
doi :
10.1038/nbt.1815 .
PMID
21390009 .
S2CID
205275386 .
^
Winter, G. ;
Fields, S. ;
Brownlee, G. G. (1981). "Nucleotide sequence of the haemagglutinin gene of a human influenza virus H1 subtype". Nature . 292 (5818): 72–5.
Bibcode :
1981Natur.292...72W .
doi :
10.1038/292072a0 .
PMID
7278968 .
S2CID
4312205 .
^
Fields, S. ;
Winter, G. ;
Brownlee, G. G. (1981). "Structure of the neuraminidase gene in human influenza virus A/PR/8/34".
Nature . 290 (5803): 213–7.
Bibcode :
1981Natur.290..213F .
doi :
10.1038/290213a0 .
PMID
7010182 .
S2CID
8051512 .
^ Riechmann, L.; Clark, M.; Waldmann, H.; Winter, G. (1988).
"Reshaping human antibodies for therapy" . Nature . 332 (6162): 323–7.
Bibcode :
1988Natur.332..323R .
doi :
10.1038/332323a0 .
PMID
3127726 .
S2CID
4335569 .
^ Marks, J. D.; Hoogenboom, H. R.; Bonnert, T. P.; McCafferty, J.; Griffiths, A. D.; Winter, G. (1991). "By-passing immunization".
Journal of Molecular Biology . 222 (3): 581–97.
doi :
10.1016/0022-2836(91)90498-U .
PMID
1748994 .
^
a
b
"Live blog: direction evolution takes chemistry Nobel prize" . Retrieved 3 October 2018 .
^
"Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2018 – live" . The Guardian . 3 October 2018. Retrieved 3 October 2018 .
^
"Sir Gregory Winter Chairman" . Archived from
the original on 29 January 2012.
^
"Greg Winter wins 2018 Nobel Prize for Chemistry – MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology" . MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology . 3 October 2018. Retrieved 7 October 2018 .
^ Winter, Gregory Paul (1976).
The amino acid sequence of tryptophanyl RNA synthetase from bacillus stearothermophilus (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge.
OCLC
500591023 .
EThOS
uk.bl.ethos.477727 .
^ Winter, G. P.; Hartley, B. S. (1977).
"The amino acid sequence of tryptophanyl tRNA Synthetase fromBacillus stearothermophilus" . FEBS Letters . 80 (2): 340–342.
doi :
10.1016/0014-5793(77)80471-7 .
ISSN
0014-5793 .
PMID
891985 .
S2CID
39202845 .
^
"King Faisal Prize | Professor Sir Gregory P. Winter" . kingfaisalprize.org . Retrieved 4 October 2018 .
^
"Scientific Advisory Board" . Heptares. Retrieved 5 April 2013 .
^
Gregory Winter publications indexed by
Google Scholar
^
"The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1984" . NobelPrize.org . Retrieved 7 October 2018 .
^
"Therapeutic Antibodies – MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology" . MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology . Retrieved 7 October 2018 .
^
"Greg Winter" . MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology .
^
"Sir Gregory Winter | Royal Society" .
^ Gregory Winter (8 May 2001).
"Gregory Winter: Executive Profile & Biography – Businessweek" . Bloomberg BusinessWeek . Retrieved 5 April 2013 . [
dead link ]
^
"www.bicycletherapeutics.com" . bicycletherapeutics.com. 10 December 2012. Retrieved 5 April 2013 .
^
"Covagen AG | September 2011: Sir Gregory Winter joins Covagen's Scientific Advisory Board" . Covagen.com. 20 September 2011. Archived from
the original on 26 April 2012. Retrieved 5 April 2013 .
^
"Covagen AG | Scientific Advisory Board" . Covagen.com. Archived from
the original on 26 April 2012. Retrieved 5 April 2013 .
^ Lawrence, Stacy (2007). "Billion dollar babies—biotech drugs as blockbusters".
Nature Biotechnology . 25 (4): 380–2.
doi :
10.1038/nbt0407-380 .
PMID
17420735 .
S2CID
205266758 .
^
"Global Pharmaceutical 2017 Industry Statistics" (PDF) . Retrieved 3 October 2018 .
^
http://www.astrazeneca.com/media/latest-press-releases/2006/5266?itemId=3891617
Archived 2 January 2010 at the
Wayback Machine
^
GSK is to buy Domantis – a company based on discoveries by MRC scientists
Archived 16 January 2014 at the
Wayback Machine LMB webpage
^ Heinis, C.; Rutherford, T.; Freund, S.; Winter, G. (2009).
"Phage-encoded combinatorial chemical libraries based on bicyclic peptides" .
Nature Chemical Biology . 5 (7): 502–507.
doi :
10.1038/nchembio.184 .
PMID
19483697 .
^
"Sir Gregory Winter CBE FMedSci FRS" . London:
Royal Society . Archived from
the original on 17 November 2015.
^
"Royal Society announces 2011 Copley Medal recipient" . Royal Society. Archived from
the original on 12 December 2013. Retrieved 23 February 2012 .
^
"LMB Structure" . Archived from
the original on 23 February 2008.
^
"Advisory Council of the Campaign for Science and Engineering" . Archived from
the original on 28 August 2010. Retrieved 11 February 2011 .
^
"Sir Gregory Winter CBE FRS appointed Master of Trinity College, Cambridge University" . 10 Downing Street. 16 December 2011. Retrieved 5 April 2013 .
^
"Master of Trinity College, Cambridge &' events" . University of Cambridge. Archived from
the original on 12 July 2012. Retrieved 5 April 2013 .
^
Sir Gregory Winter , retrieved on 17 March 2020 in Wilhelmexner.org
^ Franklin-Wallis, Oliver (23 May 2020).
"From pandemics to cancer: the science power list" . The Times .
ISSN
0140-0460 . Retrieved 26 May 2020 .
^
"The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2018" . Retrieved 9 September 2023 .
This article incorporates
text available under the
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