Anthony Davenport

Anthony Davenport is Professor of Cardiovascular Pharmacology, University of Cambridge. He is a long standing executive member of the International Union of Pharmacology Committee on Receptor Nomenclature and Drug Classification, that oversees the BPS/IUPHAR data base of drugs and their targets: https://www.guidetopharmacology.org/. His research concentrates on the role of endothelin, ETA and ETB receptors in the human cardiovascular system and the pharmacology of selective agonists and antagonists, particularly repurposing endothelin compounds in new clinical conditions. Current clinical trials nearing completion include PRIZE, a precision medicine study into the efficacy of the ETA antagonist, zibotentan in patients with microvascular angina, enriched with the minor G allele rs9349379 SNP. The related PRIZE ET sub-study explores patients genotyped for other genetic variants in the ET-1 pathway that will be correlated with phenotypic characteristics including exercise tolerance, angina severity and quantitative measures of microvascular function. Recent research has explored the action of SARS-CoV-2 on the cardiovascular system. These include the endothelin pathway, testing the combination of ETA antagonist ambrisentan with an SGLT2 inhibitor to treat COVID-19 as well as repurposing clinical compounds to reduce expression of the viral entry ‘receptor’ ACE2. With colleagues he has published an extensive Pharmacological Review on endothelin (doi: 0.1124/pr.115.011833).