Kevin Brindle

Kevin Michael Brindle (born 27 August 1955) is a British biochemist who is Emeritus Professor of Biomedical Magnetic Resonance in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge and a Senior Group Leader at Cancer Research UK. He is known for developing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques for use in cell biochemistry and new imaging methods for early detection, monitoring, and treatment of cancer.

Early life and career

Brindle took his BA in Biochemistry at Oxford University in 1978, before earning a D.Phil in 1982. He became a Royal Society University Research Fellow, also at Oxford, in 1986. Four years later, he took up a lectureship at Manchester University. He became a lecturer at Cambridge in 1993 and has been a professor there since 2005. He has developed and patented a novel imaging agent for detecting cell death. He has also worked on the development of hyperpolarized carbon-13 MRI in cancer treatment, which involves injecting a carbon-13-labelled molecule into a tumour and using MRI to monitor how quickly it is growing or dying following drug treatment. Brindle estimates the technique to be between 10,000 and 100,000 times more sensitive than conventional techniques such as magnetic resonance spectroscopy and magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging, and its main advantage is that it can show whether cancer drugs are working within days rather than weeks or months. It has been tested on numerous different types of cancer, including lung, brain, oesophageal, and breast cancers.

Selected publications