Richard Furneaux

Richard Furneaux

But perhaps most significant is this Wellington-born globetrotter’s fierce commitment to New Zealand, in particular his efforts to forge a homegrown pharmaceutical development industry that can hold its own against the giants of the world. That this dream is now a reality is testament to an early and prescient vision that brains beat brawn when it comes to securing a slice of the global pharmaceutical cake.

“We have taken the ‘rational design’ approach to drug discovery, rather than finding our starting point in screening vast compound libraries, because this is where sheer scientific skill can compete,” he says. “We can leverage off publicly funded and available biomedical research such as that by the US National Institutes of Health that provides knowledge about new biological targets for treating disease.”

Dr Furneaux’s steady rise towards the heights of his profession began back in 1976 when he pursued a Master’s degree in physical inorganic chemistry at Victoria University, following the same industrial chemistry passion of his father.

However it wasn’t until commencing his PhD under eminent chemistry professor Robin Ferrier—who, having been part of a Nobel Prize winner’s team understood what was required to make a contribution on the world stage—that he realised carbohydrate chemistry was his calling.

Besides receiving the Hector Medal from the Royal Society for his “outstanding contribution to the advancement of carbohydrate chemistry” in 2006, as well as being a co-inventor with his teammates on 22 patents in the area of enzyme inhibitors and publishing over 200 peer-reviewed papers, Dr Furneaux’s career is one marked by many significant highlights.

Within IRL, these include assisting in the development of a new industry based on the extraction of agar from New Zealand’s abundant coastal seaweed as well as the development of an exceptionally potent herbicide with Dr Peter Tyler, now manager of IRL’s carbohydrate chemistry group.

However Dr Furneaux’s watershed moment came when he teamed up with US academic Vern Schramm in 1994, a collaboration that would combine the esteemed New York professor’s expertise in rational drug design with IRL’s already significant carbohydrate chemistry capabilities, all with the aim of tackling some of the most
problematic human afflictions.

“Vern had spent 15 years developing a new way of designing potent enzyme inhibitors but needed skilful chemists to implement his vision. We clicked immediately. When asked recently why he ended up working with a New Zealand chemistry group, Vern said, ‘I went to the nearest group I could find that could get the job done.'"