50th Tillotson Lecture focuses on Biotechnology Revolution

The 50th Bolton School Boys’ Division Tillotson Lecture was delivered by former pupil Professor Robin Ali, Class of 1984, in which he gave a personal perspective on his career as an academic in the field of biotechnology and on what he sees as the future of healthcare.

Robin Ali, who is now Professor of Human Molecular Genetics at King’s College London, said it was a pleasure and honour to be invited back to Bolton School and that he was delighted to see that it is ‘still a great educational environment’. He spoke of his fond memories of his time at school (1976-1984) and how he went on to spend his undergraduate years at University College London (UCL), where he has also spent much of his career. He said, rather modestly, that in 2003, when he became the youngest professor (of Molecular Genetics) at UCL, it was a rapidly moving field and it was more down to being in the right place at the right time than his own brilliance. He also told how, two years ago, he moved across to King’s College London to head up a centre for advanced therapies. Whilst the centre has many academic teams, he said his main focus is, and has been for 30 years or so, on advanced gene cell therapies for the treatment of eye diseases, particularly inherited retinal disorders. Professor Ali gave the audience an overview of biotechnology from 1970 from the first isolation of restriction enzymes in bacteria, to his latest projects at King’s where his team is working on developing a range of gene and stem cell therapies. He then went on to field a range of questions including: to what extent can you rely on the use of potentially pathogenic viruses in possible life-changing treatments; is there a correlation between retinal detachment and ethnicity or genetics; the scalability of advanced therapies; and, answering a question about what advice he would give to the students in the audience, he advised following your passions and interests, seeing things through, having patience and perseverance and to only work on things that are really worth working on.

Earlier in the day, Professor Ali visited Biology and Design Tech classes in the Boys’ Division and enjoyed a tour of the campus.

Watch the Tillotson Lecture in full here.