Peter J. Goadsby

Peter Goadsby is an Australian neuroscientist who is Director of the National Institute for Health Research - Wellcome Trust King’s Clinical Research Facility and Professor of Neurology at King's College London. His research has focused particularly on the mechanism and alleviation of migraine and cluster headaches.

Personal life and education Goadsby was born in Australia in 1958. As an undergraduate he met James W. Lance and became interested in the area of experimental science applied to neurology, especially migraine.

Their work in the 1980s led to the discovery of the mechanism that starts a migraine, involved the calcitonin gene-related peptide, CGRP, a peptide involved in neuronal communication. This provided a new target for drugs, namely those that could interfere with the interaction of CGRP and its receptor. As a result, the gepants such as atogepant have been developed and introduced to clinical use. He was also part of a group that in a clinical trial over six months showed, for the first time, that a monoclonal antibody could significantly reduce frequency and effects of migraine. Several have been introduced into clinical use for those with chronic migraine. Erenumab was approved for use in the USA (in 2018), Scotland from 2019, England (from 2021), and other countries.

He trained in neurophysiology with David Burke. He subsequently trained, worked and studied with Don Reis at Cornell, USA; Jacques Seylaz at Universite VII, Paris, and post-graduate neurology training at the Institute of Neurology, London with C David Marsden, Andrew Lees, Anita Harding and W Ian McDonald. He later returned to Australia. He joined the University of New South Wales and became a consultant neurologist at the Prince of Wales Hospital, Sydney. He was later appointed a Wellcome Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Neurology and Professor of Clinical Neurology and Honorary Consultant Neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, London until 2007.

He was awarded with the inaugural Lance Gold medal and Oration at the first Lance-Goadsby annual Mind, Migraine, Movement and More Symposium during 2018, organised by Tissa Wijeratne and team in Australia.

In March 2021, Goadsby and his collaborators Lars Edvinsson, Michael Moskowitz and Jes Olesen were awarded the Brain Prize 2021 for their work on the causes and treatment of migraine. The prize is 10 million Danish kroner. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2022.

Publications Goadsby is the author or co-author of many scientific publications and several books and book chapters. These include:

Peter J. Goadsby, Uwe Reuter, Yngve Hallström, Gregor Broessner, Jo H. Bonner, Feng Zhang, Sandhya Sapra, Hernan Picard, Daniel D. Mikol, and Robert A. Lenz (2017) A controlled trial of erenumab for episodic migraine. New England Journal of Medicine. 377 2123-2132 A. May, J. Ashburner, C. Büchel, D.J. McGonigle, K.J. Friston, R.S.J. Frackowiak & P.J. Goadsby (1999) Correlation between structural and functional changes in brain in an idiopathic headache syndrome. Nature Medicine 5 836–838 James W. Lance Mechanism and Management of Headache (London: Butterworths, c. 1969; 3rd ed., 1978; 4th ed., 1982; 6th ed., Boston and Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann, 1999; 7th ed., Oxford: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, 2005). With Peter J. Goadsby as joint editor for 6th ed. P. Goadsby, L Edvinsson and Ekman (1990) Vasoactive peptide release in the extracerebral circulation of humans during migraine headache. Annals of Neurology 28 (2) 183-187