Philip A. Rea is a Professor of Biology in the Department of Biology in the School of Arts and Sciences, and Rebecka and Arie Belldegrun Distinguished Director of the Life Sciences & Management Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Together with Dr. Mark V. Pauly, he founded the Roy and Diana Vagelos Life Sciences & Management Program in 2005, which he continues to co-direct. Dr. Rea received his D.Phil. in Plant Biochemistry from the Department of Plant Sciences and Magdalen College, University of Oxford, UK. Shortly before joining Penn’s faculty, he was a Group Leader in the Department of Biochemistry, Rothamsted Research (formerly known as the Institute of Arable Crops Research), one of the oldest agricultural research institutions in the world.
Dr. Rea’s primary biochemical research has been directed toward understanding a broad range of transport and related phenomena with special emphasis on alternate energy sources and cellular detoxification processes. He and his group have made major contributions toward understanding a remarkably broad range of biological transport and related phenomena through their foundational investigations of vacuolar proton pumps, plant and yeast ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters, and the enzymological basis of heavy metal detoxification.
Dr. Rea's current research at the interface of the life sciences and their implementation focuses on case studies that highlight the difficult transition from discovery in the laboratory to success in the market and/or toward the expansion of humanitarian efforts. His research centers on case studies that reveal how unexpected discoveries lead to significant advances in medicine, agriculture, and public health.
His six feature articles, written for the educated layperson and translated into several languages, each focus on a different example of this transition. In ‘Statins: From Fungus to Pharma,’ Dr. Rea examines how a discovery reminiscent of the penicillin breakthrough transformed our understanding of cardiovascular disease and led to the development of statins, one of the twentieth century’s most notable biomedical achievements.
In ‘Ivermectin and River Blindness,’ he highlights the global health challenge of river blindness – a disease that remains obscure to many in the developed world. This article draws a surprising connection between the disease and the deworming tablets commonly used to protect pets and livestock, emphasizing the hidden links between veterinary and human medicine.
The article ‘Can Skinny Fat Beat Obesity?’ presents an up-to-date account of recent discoveries regarding brown and beige fat. These fat types help counteract the harmful effects of excess white fat – a major contributor to cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. This piece is of general interest to anyone concerned about obesity, offering insights into how these discoveries might pave the way for new therapeutic approaches.
In ‘Metformin: Out of Backwaters and Into the Mainstream,’ Dr. Rea traces the intriguing and sometimes circuitous history of metformin. Once shrouded in folklore and uncertainty, this drug has become the standard treatment for type 2 diabetes despite its relatively simple chemical structure and a mechanism of action that remained elusive until recently.
Similarly, ‘How Glyphosate Cropped Up’ recounts the remarkable story of glyphosate (better known as Roundup), the most widely used herbicide in the world. The article explains how this herbicide was accidentally discovered as a modified amino acid and how its finely tuned structure enables it to disrupt a key enzyme in the shikimate pathway, a pathway vital for plant life.
Dr. Rea’s most recent feature, ‘Gliflozins for Diabetes: From Bark to Bench to Bedside,’ explores a new class of drugs that target the kidneys to treat diabetes. These gliflozins provide unprecedented cardiorenal benefits and are the culmination of nearly two centuries of research that began with an uprooted apple orchard
Each article not only highlights a unique journey in life sciences research but also demonstrates the unexpected paths and serendipitous events that frequently contribute to significant advancements in the life sciences and public health.
An extension of these research activities is the book Managing Discovery in the Life Sciences. Harnessing Creativity to Drive Biomedical Innovation (2018), Cambridge University Press). In this book, Dr. Rea co-authored with his colleagues Mark V. Pauly and Lawton R. Burns, case studies of biomedical innovations are presented whereby the reader comes to better understand how the science actually played out through the interplay of personalities and cultures within and between academic and corporate entities and the significance of serendipity not as a mysterious phenomenon but one that is intrinsic to the successes and failures of the experimental approach.
'Basic understanding' is Dr. Rea's watchword for his teaching as exemplified by LSMP 1210 (formerly 121) – Proseminar in Management and the Life Sciences, and BIOL 2810 (formerly 204) – Biochemistry. He has a reputation as a dynamic and compelling lecturer, involving students in problem solving and the struggle to extract meaningful information from the incomplete data sets that inevitably confront researchers. At the outset of Rea’s undergraduate career, the thing that most inspired him was the realization that the people who were teaching him were active scientists who had directly contributed to the subject they were teaching through their research. This discovery, hand in hand with recognition that even his teachers, though active in the field, could not answer many of the basic questions and were prepared to admit to this, filled him with admiration for their humility and impelled him to learn more so that he might have the opportunity to tackle some of these questions himself. Rea would like to think that a few of the students with whom he comes into contact are similarly affected by his efforts and those of his colleagues.
Dr. Rea, who has published more than 100 papers and co-authored two books, was awarded the President's Medal of the Society for Experimental Biology, UK for his pioneering investigations of plant membrane transporters, has been a corecipient of the National Academies Cozzarelli Prize for the publication of a paper of outstanding scientific excellence and originality, and is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for outstanding fundamental research discoveries on the membrane transport and detoxification of xenobiotics, and for distinguished accomplishments and creativity in science education. He is a National Academies Education Fellow in the Life Sciences whose teaching has been recognized by the Ira H. Abrams Memorial Award for Distinguished Teaching, the College of Arts and Sciences’ highest teaching honor, the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching, the University's highest teaching honor, the Wharton Teaching Excellence Award, and four times by the Department of Biology’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. In recognition of his seminal biochemical research, and dedication and devotion to teaching, science-communication, and mentorship, Dr. Rea was awarded a higher doctorate, Doctorate of Science (D.Sc.), by his alma mater the University of Oxford.