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Rod Flower graduated in 1971 from the University of Sheffield with a first class degree in Physiology. He received his post graduate training at the department of pharmacology in the Royal College of Surgeons of England, London where his supervisor was Sir John Vane. He moved with Vane, when the latter became R & D Director at the Wellcome Foundation in Beckenham in Kent and worked there as part of his prostaglandin research team until 1984.
Rod Flower then left to take up the Chair of Pharmacology at the University of Bath where he also took over as Head of School of Pharmacy and Pharmacology from 1987 to 89. In 1989 he left and took up a post in the medical college of St Bartholomew’s Hospital (as was) where he became a Director and Founding member of the William Harvey Research Institute, William Harvey Research Limited, and started a new ‘department of Biochemical Pharmacology’. He served as Head of the Institute between 1998 and 2002.
Rod Flower was a Wellcome Principal Research Fellow (1994-2007) and much of his research is funded by grants from the Wellcome Trust. His main interests are the mechanism of action of anti-inflammatory drugs including Cox inhibitors and especially the glucocorticoid steroids. The department of Biochemical Pharmacology, which he founded, and now runs jointly with his colleague Professor Mauro Perretti, has now an excess of 25 researchers. Much of the research investigates the pharmacology and the biology of annexin A1, a protein that is induced by glucocorticoids and has profound anti-inflammatory properties. The research spans all aspects of Annexin 1 biology ranging from cell biology through to its role in human disease.
Current research interests
I have spent the majority of my scientific career working in the area of inflammation and anti-inflammatory drug mechanisms. My interest in this field began during my postgraduate days when I was responsible for some of the original work that demonstrated that the cyclo-oxygenase enzyme was the target of the aspirin like drugs, a discovery that influenced the future course of my career. Whilst at the Wellcome Foundation I became interested in the mechanism of action of glucocorticoid anti-inflammatories and demonstrated that their action was mediated through the occupation of a receptor and involved the synthesis of new proteins. I isolated one such protein (now called annexin-A1) which I believed was responsible for some glucocorticoid actions and demonstrated that it had striking anti-inflammatory properties. Over the years this has proved to be a fertile concept and my colleagues and I have investigated the biology of this protein, its role in glucocorticoid actions, in host defence and within the neuroendocrine systems. I also have an interest in the mechanism of action of other anti-inflammatory drugs including ACTH, which we showed had anti-inflammatory properties not linked to stimulation of the adrenal gland, and more recently, the cromoglycate-like anti-allergics. Interspersed with these main themes has been my work on platelets, eicosanoids and lipid mediators which are secondary research interests.
Key publications
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D'acquisto, F., Merghani, A., Lecona, E., Rosignoli, G., Raza, K., Buckley, C.D., Flower, R.J. & Perretti, M. (2007). Annexin-1 modulates t-cell activation and differentiation. Blood, 109, 1095-102.
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Moraes, L.A., Paul-Clark, M.J., Rickman, A., Flower, R.J., Goulding, N.J. & Perretti, M. (2005). Ligand-specific glucocorticoid receptor activation in human platelets. Blood, 106 , 4167-75.
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Yang, Y.H., Morand, E.F., Getting, S.J., Paul-Clark, M., Liu, D.L., Yona, S., Hannon, R., Buckingham, J.C., Perretti, M. & Flower, R.J. (2004). Modulation of inflammation and response to dexamethasone by annexin 1 in antigen-induced arthritis. Arthritis Rheum, 50, 976-84.
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Flower, R.J (2004). Lifestyle drugs: pharmacology and the social agenda. Trends Pharmacol Sci, 25, 182-5.
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Hannon, R., Croxtall, J.D., Getting, S.J., Roviezzo, F., Yona, S., Paul-Clark, M.J., Gavins, F.N., Perretti, M., Morris, J.F., Buckingham, J.C. & Flower, R.J. (2003). Aberrant inflammation and resistance to glucocorticoids in annexin 1-/- mouse. FASEB J, 17, 253-5.
- Croxtall, J.D., Gilroy, D.W., Solito, E., Choudhury, Q., Ward, B.J., Buckingham, J.C. & Flower, R.J. (2003). Attenuation of glucocorticoid functions in an anx-a1-/- cell line. Biochem J , 371, 927-35
- Flower, R.J. (2003). The development of cox2 inhibitors. Nat Rev Drug Discov, 2, 179-91.
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Croxtall, J.D., Van Hal, P.T., Choudhury, Q., Gilroy, D.W. & Flower, R.J. (2002). Different glucocorticoids vary in their genomic and non-genomic mechanism of action in a549 cells. Br J Pharmacol, 135, 511-9.
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