Alkis Seraphim Memorial Lecture

History of the Lecture

Alkis Seraphim was accepted by Selwyn College to read Natural Sciences in 1978 and in 1980 he took Part 2 Biochemistry. In February 1981, whilst returning from a weekend in Paris, he was killed in a car crash in Northern France.

To commemorate his life and career his parents, George and Claire Seraphim, established the Alkis Seraphim Memorial Lecture to enable the Department of Biochemistry to host leading figures from around the world in the fields of cellular and molecular biology.

List of Lecturers since inception

1982    Sir John Gurdon, FRS: "Future pathways in the molecular biology of development”

1983    Sir Walter Bodmer, FRS: "Molecular genetics of the HLA System"

1984    Dr George K. Radda, FRS: "From molecules to man: a look inside the cell by NMR”

1985    Professor R.A. Laskey, FRS; "Chromosome replication"

1986    Dr Max Perutz, OM, CH, CBE, FRS: "Haemoglobin as a receptor of drugs and peptides"

1987    Dr Sydney Brenner, CH, FRS: "Molecular genetics of complex organisms"

1988    Sir Aaron Klug, FRS: "From DNA to chromosome"

1989    Professor G. Schatz:  "How cells build their membranes"

1990    Dr Hugh B. Pelham, FRS:  "How cells secrete proteins"

1992    Sir Tim Hunt, FRS: "The role of cyclins and cell division kinases in the control of the cell cycle"

1993    Professor Sir David Weatherall, FRCP, FRS: "The molecular basis for the clinical diversity of inherited diseases"

1994    Professor Philip Cohen, FRS: "The map kinases cascade; a signal transduction pathway of relevance to several major diseases"

1995    Professor John Bell:  "The genetics of common disease"

1996    Professor David Lane:  "Regulating and replacing suppressor gene function with small synthetic molecules: design of an active synthetic suppressor protein"

1997    Professor Thomas Lindahl, ICRF, London: "DNA Decay and Repair in Mammalian Cells"

1998    Professor Christopher Higgins, Director, MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, London: "ABC Transporters, Channels and Channel Regulators”

1999    Professor Andrew Wyllie, Head, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge: "Cancer and Cell Death"

2000    Dr Simon Campbell, formerly Head of Discovery, Pfizer Worldwide: "Science, Art and Drug Discovery - a Personal Perspective"

2001    Dr Venki Ramakrishnan, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge: "Insights from the atomic structure of the 20S ribosomal subunit and its interactions with antibiotics"

2002    Professor Christer Betsholtz, Department of Medical Biochemistry, University of Goteborg:  "Developmental roles of platelet-derived growth factors

2003    Professor R. (Bob) Edwards, FRS: "Molecules, embryos and ethics in human IVF today"

2005    Professor Mike Stratton, Wellcome Trust, Sanger Institute:  "Large Scale Searches for Somatic Mutations in Human Cancer"

2006    Professor Dame Louise Johnson, FRS, Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics, University of Oxford: "Structural Biology of Cell Cycle Signalling through Protein Kinases"

2007    Professor Athel Cornish-Bowden, CNRS Institute of Structural Biology and Microbiology, Marseilles: "Closing the metabolic circle: towards an understanding of life"

2008    Professor Dr. Robert Huber FMRS, Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry: "A molecular basis of proteolysis and its regulation"

2009    Professor Julian Downward, FRS, Cancer Research UK: "Exploiting the defective wiring of cancer cells for the development of targeted therapies"

2010    Professor Gerard Evan, FRS, Department of Biochemistry, Cambridge: "Deconstructing cancer"

2011    Professor Kim Naysmyth, FRS, Department of Biochemistry, Oxford: "How do cells establish and maintain sister chromatid cohesion?"

2012    Professor Marc Vidal, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School: "Interactome Networks and Human Disease"

2016    Professor Karen Vousden, CBE, FRS, FRSE, FMedSci, Chief Scientist Cancer Research UK, Director of the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute, "Serine metabolism in cancer – new therapeutic possibilities?"

2017   Professor Andrew Fire, Professor of Pathology and Genetics, University of Stanford, California: "Opportunistic RNAs and Acquisitive Genomes"

2018   Professor Lewis Cantley, Meyer Director and Professor of Cancer Biology at the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Centre, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York: "PI 3-Kinase and Cancer Metabolism"

2019   Professor Philip A. Beachy, Ernest and Amelia Gallo Professor in the Stanford University School of Medicine and Professor of Urology, Developmental Biology and Chemical and Systems Biology: "Hedgehog signaling: regeneration, malignancy, and regulation by membrane cholesterol redistribution"

2024   Frances Arnold, Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology: "Innovation by Evolution: Bringing New Chemistry to Life"

2025    Professor Ben Lehner, Head of Generative and Synthetic Genomics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute: "Mutate Everything! Mapping the energetic and allosteric structures of proteins at scale"