SRF New Investigator - Dr Kurt Sales

Dr Kurt Sales obtained his BSc degree in Biochemistry and Physiology, with his honours in Pharmacology and M.Sc in Biochemistry from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. His PhD, which was awarded in 2002, was conducted in collaboration between the University of Cape Town and the Medical Research Council (MRC) Human Reproductive Sciences Unit in Edinburgh. In 2001 Dr Sales was appointed as a Post Doctoral research fellow, under the mentorship of Dr Henry Jabbour at the MRC Human Reproductive Sciences Unit in Edinburgh and was promoted to Senior MRC Investigator Scientist in 2005. Dr Sales’s research has focussed on the role of cyclooxygenase (COX) enzymes, their bioactive products, prostaglandins (PG) and prostaglandin receptors in pathologies of the female reproductive tract. He has had a very active research career and co-supervised numerous PhD students and Post Doctoral fellows. During 2001-2008, Dr Sales published 17 research articles in high impact journals in addition to 7 review articles and book chapters, including seminal work in Cancer Research in 2002 where he elaborated the role of COX-1, previously thought to perform housekeeping functions, in regulating the pathology of cervical cancer. Since then he has focussed his research on the role of the specific prostaglandin G-protein-coupled receptors, EP2 and FP receptor in endometrial adenocarcinoma. Dr Sales’s work has highlighted novel signal transduction pathways mediating the role of prostaglandin signalling in angiogenesis in endometrial adenocarcinomas, as well as signal transduction pathways regulating tissue architecture, and motility.