Abstract
Ian A Blair speaks to Francesca Lake, Managing Editor: Blair received his PhD in Organic Chemistry in 1971 from Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, under the mentorship of the 1969 Nobel Laureate, Sir Derek HR Barton. He was appointed as the AN Richards Professor of Pharmacology at University of Pennsylvania in 1997 and Director of a new Center for Cancer Pharmacology. In 2002, Blair was appointed as Vice-Chair of the Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics. In 2014, he became Director of the NIEHS-funded Penn Superfund Research and Training Program Center. Blair is an expert in the use of mass spectrometric methods for the structural elucidation and quantification of endogenous biomolecules. His current research is involved with the development of biomarkers in order to establish genetic/phenotype correlations and to assess the interaction between genes and exposure to environmental chemicals. He is particularly interested in the regulation of cellular oxidative stress and how this underpins mechanisms involved in carcinogenesis, cardiovascular disease and neurodegeneration. Blair discovered electron capture atmospheric pressure chemical ionization, a technique that makes it possible to conduct high sensitivity quantitative analyses of chiral biomolecules. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists. He received the 2011 Eastern Analytical Award for Outstanding Achievements in Mass Spectrometry. Blair is Senior Editor of Future Science OA, and a member of the Editorial Board of several journals.
Highlights
I was a research fellow in Adelaide, South Australia where I was working on steroid production rates as a trained organic chemist
The way we analyzed what happened to the labeled steroids was by using GC–MS, so I got very interested in the technique of MS; it was more satisfying than the synthesis
One day I found out you could buy it for a dollar a gram and I wondered why on Earth I was doing all of this convoluted synthesis! My new work was much more fun because you gave the labeled steroids to people and they metabolized them at different rates; that was my entrée into pharmacology
Summary
I was a research fellow in Adelaide, South Australia where I was working on steroid production rates as a trained organic chemist. In 2014, he became Director of the NIEHS-funded Penn Superfund Research and Training Program Center. Thirty years of working on oxidative stress has led me into these two quite different areas: one Friedreich’s ataxia and one asbestos exposure.
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