Peter Goadsby is an Australian neuroscientist who is Director of the

National Institute for Health Research The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is the British government's major funder of clinical, public health, social care and translational research. With a budget of over £1.2 billion in 2020–21, its mission is to "improv ...

Wellcome Trust The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of Burroughs Wellcome, one of the predec ...

King’s Clinical Research Facility and Professor of Neurology at

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

. His research has focused particularly on the mechanism and alleviation of migraine and cluster headaches.

Personal life and education

Goadsby was born in Australia in 1958. He attended a secondary school that did not have high academic ambitions for the pupils. This made him determined to follow an academic course. He was interested in politics from a young age, and was planning to study economics at university. However, after an argument with his mother, a mathematics teacher, he applied to study medicine, and was accepted by

University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales (UNSW) is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It was established in 1949. The university comprises seven faculties, through which it offers bachelor's, master's and docto ...

. As an undergraduate he met

James W. Lance James Waldo Lance AO, CBE (1926–2019), often referred to as James Lance and James W. Lance, was an Australian neurologist. He was the founder of the School of Neurology at the University of New South Wales and president of the International ...

and became interested in the area of experimental science applied to neurology, especially migraine.

Career

Goadsby's research has focused on headaches, trying to understand their mechanisms and how to provide better treatments. His work has especially addressed the causes of

migraine Migraine (, ) is a complex neurological disorder characterized by episodes of moderate-to-severe headache, most often unilateral and generally associated with nausea, and light and sound sensitivity. Other characterizing symptoms may includ ...

and

cluster headaches Cluster headache is a neurological disorder characterized by recurrent severe headaches on one side of the head, typically around the eye(s). There is often accompanying eye watering, nasal congestion, or swelling around the eye on the affecte ...

. His research led him to hypothesise that migraine might not be a vascular disease, as was then accepted, or psychosomatic and caused by stress. Instead, he and colleagues developed evidence that it had a nerve-based mechanism that resulted in the pain and other symptoms. Their work in the 1980s led to the discovery of the mechanism that starts a migraine, involved the calcitonin gene-related peptide, CGRP, a peptide involved in

neuronal communication A neuron (American English), neurone (British English), or nerve cell, is an excitable cell that fires electric signals called action potentials across a neural network in the nervous system. They are located in the nervous system and help to ...

. This provided a new target for drugs, namely those that could interfere with the interaction of CGRP and its

receptor Receptor may refer to: * Sensory receptor, in physiology, any neurite structure that, on receiving environmental stimuli, produces an informative nerve impulse *Receptor (biochemistry), in biochemistry, a protein molecule that receives and respond ...

. As a result, the

gepant Calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) receptor antagonists, commonly known as gepants, are a class of drugs that act as antagonists of the calcitonin gene-related peptide receptor (CGRPR). Several monoclonal antibodies that bind to the CGRP recep ...

s such as

atogepant Atogepant, sold under the brand name Qulipta among others, is a medication used to prevent migraines. It is a gepant, a calcitonin gene-related peptide receptor antagonist administered orally. The most common side effects include nausea, cons ...

have been developed and introduced to clinical use. He was also part of a group that in a clinical trial over six months showed, for the first time, that a

monoclonal antibody A monoclonal antibody (mAb, more rarely called moAb) is an antibody produced from a cell lineage made by cloning a unique white blood cell. All subsequent antibodies derived this way trace back to a unique parent cell. Monoclonal antibodie ...

could significantly reduce frequency and effects of migraine. Several have been introduced into clinical use for those with chronic migraine.

Erenumab Erenumab, sold under the brand name Aimovig, is a medication which blocks the calcitonin gene-related peptide receptor (CGRPR) for the prevention of migraine. It is administered by subcutaneous injection. Erenumab, which was developed by Amgen ...

was approved for use in the USA (in 2018), Scotland from 2019, England (from 2021), and other countries. He trained in neurophysiology with David Burke. He subsequently trained, worked and studied with Don Reis at Cornell, USA; Jacques Seylaz at Universite VII, Paris, and post-graduate neurology training at the

Institute of Neurology The UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology is an institute within the Faculty of Brain Sciences of University College London, University College London (UCL) and is located in London, United Kingdom. Together with the National Hospital for Neur ...

, London with C David Marsden, Andrew Lees,

Anita Harding Anita Elizabeth Harding (17 September 1952 – 11 September 1995) was an Irish-British neurologist, and Professor of Clinical Neurology at the Institute of Neurology of the University of London. She is known for the discovery with Ian Holt ...

and W Ian McDonald. He later returned to Australia. He joined the University of New South Wales and became a consultant neurologist at the

Prince of Wales Hospital, Sydney The Prince of Wales Hospital is a 440-bed major public teaching hospital located in Sydney's eastern suburb of Randwick, providing a full range of hospital services to the people of New South Wales, Australia. The hospital has strong ties to the ...

. He was later appointed a Wellcome Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Neurology and Professor of Clinical Neurology and Honorary Consultant Neurologist at the

National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (informally the National Hospital or Queen Square) is a neurological hospital in Queen Square, London. It is part of the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. It was the f ...

, London until 2007. Goadsby was Professor of Neurology, at University of California, San Francisco, 2007-2013. He is also an Honorary Consultant Neurologist at the

Great Ormond Street Hospital Great Ormond Street Hospital (informally GOSH, formerly the Hospital for Sick Children) is a children's hospital located in the Bloomsbury area of the London Borough of Camden, and a part of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS F ...

for Sick Children, UK and Professor of Neurology, University of California, Los Angeles.

Awards

Peter Goadsby was awarded with the inaugural Lance Gold medal and Oration at the first Lance-Goadsby annual Mind, Migraine, Movement and More Symposium during 2018, organised by Tissa Wijeratne and team in Australia. In March 2021, Goadsby and his collaborators Lars Edvinsson, Michael Moskowitz and Jes Olesen were awarded the Brain Prize 2021 for their work on the causes and treatment of migraine. The prize is 10 million Danish kroner. He was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

in 2022.

Publications

Goadsby is the author or co-author of many scientific publications and several books and book chapters. These include: * Peter J. Goadsby, Uwe Reuter, Yngve Hallström, Gregor Broessner, Jo H. Bonner, Feng Zhang, Sandhya Sapra, Hernan Picard, Daniel D. Mikol, and Robert A. Lenz (2017
A controlled trial of erenumab for episodic migraine
''New England Journal of Medicine.'' 377 2123-2132 * A. May, J. Ashburner, C. Büchel, D.J. McGonigle, K.J. Friston, R.S.J. Frackowiak & P.J. Goadsby (1999
Correlation between structural and functional changes in brain in an idiopathic headache syndrome.
Nature Medicine 5 836–838 * James W. Lance ''Mechanism and Management of Headache'' (London: Butterworths, c. 1969; 3rd ed., 1978; 4th ed., 1982; 6th ed., Boston and Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann, 1999; 7th ed., Oxford: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, 2005). With Peter J. Goadsby as joint editor for 6th ed. * P. Goadsby, L Edvinsson and Ekman (1990
Vasoactive peptide release in the extracerebral circulation of humans during migraine headache.
''Annals of Neurology'' 28 (2) 183-187

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Goadsby, Peter 1950 births Australian neuroscientists Fellows of the Royal Society Academics of King's College London University of New South Wales alumni NIHR Senior Investigators Living people