Gregory Winter

is a British biochemist, a pioneer of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies. He invented techniques to both humanise (1986) and, later, to fully humanise using phage display, antibodies for therapeutic uses. 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. Sir Gregory Winter (1970) is Master of Trinity College Cambridge and until recently a member of the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge. He is a scientist, inventor and entrepreneur. He read Biological Sciences at Trinity. His scientific career has almost entirely been based in Cambridge where his work has involved the development of technologies for making pharmaceutical antibodies by genetic engineering. Such antibodies have proved useful for treatment of cancer and immune disorders, and now comprise many of the world’s top-selling pharmaceutical drugs. These include the “humanized” antibodies Herceptin (for treatment of breast cancer) and Lucentis (for treatment of wet acute macular degeneration), and the human antibody Humira (for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis), currently the world’s top selling pharmaceutical drug. In order to see his technologies applied, Sir Gregory founded several successful start-up companies, including Cambridge Antibody Technology in 1990 (acquired by Astra Zeneca in 2006), a Domantis in 2000 (acquired by GSK in 2006) and Bicycle Therapeutics in 2010, which is developing a peptide product for treatment of cancer. Sir Gregory Winter is a Fellow of the Royal Society, has received numerous international prizes and awards, and in 2004 was knighted for his services to Molecular Biology. He is a Trustee of the Kennedy Trust for Rheumatology Research and consults for the antibody biotech companies F-star and Covagen.