Fiona Marshall (pharmacologist)

Marshall became interested in biology, chemistry and physics at high school.[6] As a teenager she won a prize at a national physics competition. Marshall graduated with a First class degree in biochemistry from the University of Bath in 1987.[7] She moved to the University of Cambridge for her graduate studies,[8] where she focussed on neuroscience under the supervision of John Hughes.[8] Her doctoral advisor served as director of the University of Cambridge Parke-Davis Research Centre, which inspired Marshall to work in the pharmaceutical industry.[7]

After earning her doctorate Marshall moved to GlaxoSmithKline where she joined the department of neuropharmacology. Marshall worked alongside Patrick Humphrey and Mike Tyers at GlaxoSmithKline. Here she investigated the receptors that are activated by neurotransmitters and microbial metabolites.[9] After only nine years, Marshall was made Head of Molecular Pharmacology in 1999.[7] She eventually moved from the neuropharmacology team to a group working on G protein-coupled receptors.[7] Almost a third of drugs work through these G protein-coupled receptors.[6] She was the first to identify and describe the cloning and structural requirements of the GABAB receptor, a member of the GPCR family. She was headhunted by Millennium Pharmaceuticals and joined as their Director of Molecular Pharmacology in 2000.[7] When her children were young, Marshall took time out of her work at GlaxoSmithKline to work more flexibly.[6]

Working with Malcolm Weir, and together with Christopher Tate and Richard Henderson, Marshall founded Heptares Therapeutics,[10] a spin-out from the Medical Research Council (MRC).[11] Heptares makes use of technologies developed by the Medical Research Council that allow the crystallisation and characterisation of G protein-coupled receptors. One of the cancer therapy drug candidates developed by Heptares was licensed to AstraZeneca in 2015. Later that year, Heptares was incorporated into the Japanese biopharmaceutical company Sosei.[6][2]

Marshall joined Merck & Co as Head of the Discovery Research Centre in 2018. In this capacity she concentrated on diseases of ageing. In 2019 she was made Head of Neuroscience Discovery, where she spent two years before being appointed Senior Vice President of Discovery, Preclinical & Translational Medicine Research.[12] She serves on the council of the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Medical Research Council.