Professor Paul O'Neill BSc Hons PhD CChem MRSC

Personal Statement

Paul M. O'Neill graduated in Chemistry and Pharmacology at the University of Liverpool in 1990 and also obtained a Ph.D degree here in 1995. Following graduation, he was appointed Roche Lecturer in Medicinal Chemistry in the Department of Pharmacology at Liverpool from 1995-96. In 1997 he carried out postdoctoral research with Professor Gary H. Posner at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA. In 1998 Paul was appointed to a lectureship between the Departments of Chemistry and Pharmacology at Liverpool and he became Senior Lecturer in 2003 and Reader in 2005. Paul works in several areas of synthetic organic chemistry and pharmacology with a strong emphasis on drug-design, chemical biology and medicinal chemistry of anti-infectives. Currently the main target diseases of the O'Neill group include malaria, TB and human filariasis in collaboration with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. At Liverpool, Paul's group has candidate selected three novel antimalarials with one of these, Isoquine, entering clinical trials in 2008. More recently his group have undertaken research into novel antibacterial drugs for the treatment of filariasis as part of the Anti-Wolbachia (AWOL) Consortium, a drug discovery initiative run out of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine; this has led to candidate selection of a novel antifilarial macrofilaricidal compound AWZ1066 which entered Phase 1 trials in 2022. Paul has published 191 papers (WOS h-index =55, Google Scholar h-index = 70) and was awarded the RSC Malcom Campbell Award for his antimalarial drug discovery research in 2011.

Prizes or Honours

• Queens Anniversary Prize in Pharmacology (Royal Anniversary Trust, 2018)
• RSC Malcolm Campbell Award (BMCS Division of The Royal Society of Chemistry, Presented at Cambridge University, 2011)