Derek graduated with a PhD from the Department of Endocrinology at Bart's and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London in 2001. Since then he has completed post-doctoral posts within the University of London in areas including wound healing, appetite regulation and inflammation.

Derek works on models of inflammation and particularly the area of pro-resolution with a focus on Annexin A1 protein. He secured a lecturership in physiology at the University of Westminster in September 2007 and began to develop an independent academic research career. Derek continued to work in the area of inflammation and pursued a number of research areas including work on salivary biomarkers, the inflammation associated with adiposity and the use of anti-inflammatory substances as therapeutic agents.

Derek has also led a number of commercialization projects including a wound healing project investigating novel combinations of peptides in human tissue repair. Another externally funded project involved the development of a micro-particle based nutrient delivery platform for the oral delivery of iron. Derek was also Lead Academic of a Technology Strategy Board (now Innovate UK) funded Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) grant between the University of Westminster and Nelsons Spatone®. In recognition of his achievements in the area of enterprise in January 2012 Derek was awarded the School of Life Sciences Entrepreneurial Prize Fellowship, which involved the co-ordination and academic leadership of all enterprise activities within the School of Life Sciences at the University of Westminster. Recently Derek joined the Centre for Applied Biological and Exercise Sciences at Coventry University as Professor of Translational Physiology and now provides academic leadership for the theme of Health and Disease within the research centre.

Area of Expertise:

Endocrinology/inflammation/gut physiology

My research addresses a number of key areas of human health. My research led to the novel discovery that endogenous anti-inflammatory substances found in human blood are significantly attenuated in human obesity. This demonstrates the potential of using anti-inflammatory therapeutics to treat the inflammation associated with human obesity, a disease that is strongly linked with metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes. The overall aim of this research is to delineate the pathophysiological pathways, which link adipose tissue expansion to human disease in order to design pharmacological and life-style interventions to tackle this growing crisis in human metabolic disease.