Sir John Gerald Patrick Sissons (28 June 1945 – 25 September 2016) was an English physician, specialising in nephrology and virology, focusing on

cytomegalovirus ''Cytomegalovirus'' (CMV) (from ''cyto-'' 'cell' via Greek - 'container' + 'big, megalo-' + -''virus'' via Latin 'poison') is a genus of viruses in the order '' Herpesvirales'', in the family '' Herpesviridae'', in the subfamily '' Betaherp ...

. He was a FRCP,

FRCPath The Royal College of Pathologists (RCPath) is a professional membership organisation. Its main function is the overseeing of postgraduate training, and its Fellowship Examination (FRCPath) is recognised as the standard assessment of fitness to p ...

, FMedSci and Regius Professor of Physic at the University of Cambridge.

Biography

Patrick Sissons was born in

Hessle Hessle () is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, west of Kingston upon Hull. Geographically it is part of a larger urban area consisting of the city of Kingston upon Hull, the town of H ...

, East Riding of Yorkshire and attended Ilkley and

Felsted School Felsted School is a co-educational independent school, independent boarding school, boarding and Day school, day school, situated in Felsted in Essex, England. It is in the British Public school (UK), public school tradition, and was founded i ...

. He studied medicine at

St Mary's Hospital Medical School St Mary's Hospital Medical School was the youngest of the constituent medical schools of Imperial College School of Medicine, founded in 1854 as part of the new hospital in Paddington. During its existence in the 1980s and 1990s, it was the most ...

, London. After graduation, he continued there, specialising in nephrology, studying immune-mediated kidney diseases. His clinical training was at the

University of the West Indies The University of the West Indies (UWI), originally University College of the West Indies, is a public university system established to serve the higher education needs of the residents of 18 English-speaking countries and territories in t ...

Career

Sissons won an NIH Fogarty Fellowship and moved to the

Scripps Research Institute Scripps Research is a nonprofit American medical research facility that focuses on research and education in the biomedical sciences. Headquartered in San Diego, California, the institute has over 170 laboratories employing 2,100 scientists, tec ...

in San Diego for 3 years, where he worked under Michael Oldstone. He returned to London and continued at

Hammersmith Hospital Hammersmith Hospital, formerly the Military Orthopaedic Hospital, and later the Special Surgical Hospital, is a major teaching hospital in White City, London, White City, West London. It is part of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in the ...

, working with

Keith Peters (physician) Sir David Keith Peters (born 26 July 1938) is a retired Welsh physician and academic. He was Regius Professor of Physic at the University of Cambridge from 1987 to 2005, where he was also head of the School of Clinical Medicine. Education Ed ...

on the virology research side and Jonathan Cohen, establishing a clinical infectious diseases service. He began working on

during the late 1970s and 1980s with John Sinclair focusing on virus latency and reactivation in humans, which had been done in animal models only.

Leszek Borysiewicz Sir Leszek Krzysztof Borysiewicz (born 13 April 1951) is a British professor, immunologist and scientific administrator. He served as the 345th Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, his term of office (a maximum of seven years) star ...

was his PhD student. In 1987, he moved to the University of Cambridge, helped develop the Faculty of Clinical Medicine, connecting it with the

MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology The Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) is a research institute in Cambridge, England, involved in the revolution in molecular biology which occurred in the 1950–60s. Since then it has remained a major medical r ...

and

Addenbrooke's Hospital Addenbrooke's Hospital is a large teaching hospital and research centre in Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county to ...

, helped to develop the Centre for Clinical Investigation, the Institute of Metabolic Science and the Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre and is said to have convinced

AstraZeneca AstraZeneca plc () (AZ) is a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with its headquarters at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in Cambridge, UK. It has a portfolio of products for major diseases in areas includi ...

to move its research to Cambridge. In 2005, Sissons became Regius Professor of Physic at the University of Cambridge after Peters retired, until his own retirement in 2012. He died in September 2016 from complications of Parkinson's disease.

References

1945 births 2016 deaths Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom) Knights Bachelor Fellows of Darwin College, Cambridge Fellows of the Royal College of Pathologists Regius Professors of Physic (Cambridge) {{UK-academic-stub