Prof. Dr. Christopher Overall

Curriculum Vitae

Dr. Overall is a Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Metalloproteinase Proteomics and Systems Biology at the University of British Columbia, Centre for Blood Research. He completed his undergraduate, honours Science and Masters degrees at the University of Adelaide, South Australia; his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Toronto; and was a MRC Centennial Fellow in his post-doctoral work with Dr Michael Smith Nobel Laureate, Biotechnology Laboratory. He won the CIHR Institute of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis 2002 Researcher of the Year Award, the University of British Columbia Killam Senior Researcher Award (Science) 2005, and he chaired both the 2003 MMP and the 2010 Protease Gordon Research Conferences. On Sabbatical in 1997-1998 he was a Visiting Scientist at British Biotech Pharmaceuticals, Oxford, UK and in 2004/2008 he was a Visiting Scientist at the Expert Protease Platform, Novartis Pharma, Basel, Switzerland. He is the pioneer of the field of proteomics now termed degradomics, with 6 Nature Review Papers on this, protease genomics, drug target validation, MMP therapeutics, and substrate discovery. He has developed numerous approaches to decipher the roles of proteases in vivo by elucidating the protease and substrate degradomes through quantitative proteomics and N- and C-terminome analysis in cell based systems and in animal models. From his 2000 Science paper he was one of the first proponents in the field to push the concept that MMPs are more than matrix degraders, rather they are critical signaling proteases involved in the regulation of extracellular homeostasis. By developing new global approaches for the study of proteolysis the biological roles of proteases in complex systems is being elucidated.