Peter Goadsby

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.

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.

Goadsby was Professor of Neurology, at University of California, San Francisco, 2007-2013. He is also an Honorary Consultant Neurologist at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, UK and Professor of Neurology, University of California, Los Angeles.

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.

Goadsby was born in Australia in 1950. He attended a secondary school that did not have high academic ambitions for the pupils. This made him determined to follow an academic course. He was interested in politics from a young age, and was planning to study economics at university. However, after an argument with his mother, a mathematics teacher, he applied to study medicine, and was accepted by University of New South Wales. As an undergraduate he met James W. Lance and became interested in the area of experimental science applied to neurology, especially migraine.