Professor Bruce E. Kemp AO
Professor Bruce Kemp AO, Pehr Edman Fellow, is recognised internationally as one of the major figures to contribute to our understanding of protein kinases at the molecular level and their roles in cellular signalling.
Starting with the cAMP-dependent protein kinase in the mid-70’s he delineated the substrate specificity of many different protein kinases and developed the novel simplifying concept that it depended on linear epitopes – one of which now bears his name as Kemptide. He also showed that an important common mechanism of kinase regulation was inhibition by a pseudosubstrate region of the kinase itself (intrasteric inhibition) that had to be modified to achieve activation of the kinase.
Professor T. J. (Jack) Martin AO
Professor Jack Martin AO, John Holt Fellow, was SVI Director from 1988 to 2002.
Professor Martin has greatly advanced contemporary understanding of calcium regulating hormones. He demonstrated that osteoclasts possess calcitonin receptors and clarified the second messenger actions of parathyroid hormone (PTH). He has contributed extensively to modern concepts of bone cell biology, being a co-proposer of the hypothesis that bone resorbing hormones act initially on osteoblastic cells.
His most outstanding contribution was the cloning of parathyroid hormone related protein (PTHrP) which he has shown to have a pivotal role in the syndrome of the humoral hypercalcaemia of malignancy as well as being involved in an increasingly diverse series of biological events.