Professor Sir Steve Bloom FMedSci, FRS

Summary

Steve Bloom is the Head of Drug Development, Dept Metabolism, Digestion & Reproduction and Clinical Director of Pathology for North West London Pathology at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, serving six major acute hospitals. He heads a 30 strong research team investigating the physiology of regulatory peptides in CNS and periphery.

Professor Bloom received his undergraduate medical training at Cambridge University. His house officer, senior house officer and registrar posts were largely undertaken at The Middlesex Hospital, University College London, where he also received his MRC Clinical Research Fellowship training. He moved to the Royal Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith Hospital in 1974 where his roles have included Senior Lecturer (Consultant Physician), Reader in Medicine then Professor of Medicine and Chairman of the Academic Board. In Hammersmith Hospital he was Director of the Endocrinology Clinical Service and Deputy Director, Department of Medicine, Director of Chemical Pathology (renamed Metabolic Medicine) and later in the Hammersmith Hospitals Trust, Chief of Service for Pathology and Chief of Service Endocrinology and Diabetes.

In the 1980s Steve Bloom pioneered the discovery of several gut hormones and established their endocrine physiology, including their influence on appetite regulation and their simultaneous role as neurotransmitters. His research work over the years falls into five related categories: endocrinology clinical research, physiology and pathology of gut hormones, control of insulin release and insulin resistance, role of neuropeptides in organ control and the role of neuropeptides in CNS regulation of appetite and related hypothalamic functions. He currently leads a research group investigating hypothalamic appetite control systems and gut hormones. He has published over 1000 papers (excluding review articles) in journals such as Nature, J Biol Chem, PNAS, JCI and NEJM. His h-index is 157, the 64th highest cited academic in the world of all time.

This group’s discovery that oxyntomodulin reduces appetite offers a potential new treatment for obesity and in 2005 Steve co-founded spin out company ‘Thiakis Ltd’ to commercialise these findings. Thiakis was sold to Wyeth in 2008 for a reported £100 million (milestoned).

Steve has been a member of the Main Scientific Board for AstraZeneca and advisory boards for Upjohn and Novartis. He was Senior Censor then Vice President of the Royal College of Physicians, Chairman of the Medical Research Society, Chairman of the Society for Endocrinology, Chairman of BioScientifica and Chairman of the Diabetes UK Research Committee as well as a current and past member of a number of MRC grant committees, currently the Innovate UK Major Awards Committee. He was a Board member of the National Institute of Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC) and Chairman of the Scientific Committee. He was a member of the Rector's weekly executive committee in Imperial College London and a member of the West London NHS Area Health Authority. In 2013 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and now chairs Sectional Committee 10. In 2019 he was elected a member of the EU Academy of Sciences. He chaired the Warwick Medical School Faculty Advisory Board and now chairs the Health Partnership Board. In 2018 he received an Honorary Doctorate of Warwick University and in 2019 an Honorary Doctorate of Brunel University. In 2019 a biotech spinout, Zihipp, of which he is Chairman, began work on a series of new diabetes and obesity therapies.

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