Distinguished Professor Sir Bill Denny, KNZM, of Auckland, for services to medical research
Distinguished Professor Sir Bill Denny has been at the forefront of anticancer drug research for more than 40 years and was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2003 for his contributions in this field.
Sir Bill has continued in his role as Director of the Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre at the University of Auckland, having held the position since 1999.
Over the course of his career he has led teams which have taken 15 cancer drugs from the discovery phase through to clinical trials, and in some cases application in the clinic.
Additional research at the Centre has led to an anti-tuberculosis drug in 2015 and an anti-Leishmaniasis drug in 2017.
As part of the development of these drugs, he has been a co-founding scientist with Proacta Theraputics in San Diego and Pathway Theraputics in San Fransisco, and has worked with the Global Alliance for TB and the Geneva-based Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative.
He co-founded Kea Theraputics in 2018, which is developing a range of anaesthetics and analgesics to reduce the reliance on opioids.
He has authored more than 700 publications and is a co-inventor on close to 70 US patents. Sir Bill was appointed to the American Chemical Society Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame in 2016.