Patrick Sexton, PhD, DSc

Patrick Sexton is a NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Director of the ARC Centre for Cryo-electron Microscopy of Membrane Proteins.

Dr. Sexton is an international leader in the study of GPCRs, biased agonism, and allosteric interactions between GPCRs and other proteins and small molecule ligands. His research crosses industry and academic boundaries through elucidation of fundamental biology and the intersection of this with drug-receptor interactions. He has contributed to the understanding of the distribution of receptors, the structural interface between peptide ligands and receptors, GPCR structure elucidation by cryo-EM, modulation of receptors by accessory proteins, detection and quantification of small-molecule allosteric drug effects, and biased agonism. More recently, Dr. Sexton’s team has been at the forefront of the application of cryo-EM to elucidate the structure and dynamics of GPCRs.

Dr. Sexton has published over 300 peer reviewed journal articles. He is a member of the Faculty of 1000 (Molecular Pharmacology division) and an elected Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society. He obtained his BSc (Hons) in Pharmacology and PhD from the University of Melbourne, Australia and Doctor of Science from Monash University.