© EJ Carr/ www.ejcphoto.com

Some physicians like to relate tales of how, even as tiny children, they were driven to help save people's lives. Fergus Shanahan, director of University College Cork's (UCC) Alimentary Pharmabiotic Center, is more honest. "I did medicine because my mother told me to do it," he laughs, "and she was right!"

His career choice wasn't all maternal intimidation though, as he notes more seriously. "I definitely knew I was going to do something in the sciences." He earned a medical degree with honors from the National University of Ireland in 1977, after which he was offered a fellowship in clinical immunology at McMaster University in Canada, where he stayed for three years.

"I learned after the fact that they were leaders in mucosal (intestinal) immunology," Shanahan recalls. He is now a recognized world leader in that area, but in Canada, he still hadn't decided on the area that would truly inspire him. That occurred when he headed off to the University of California, Los Angeles, on a fellowship in gastroenterology.

"I can even relate it to a particular day," Shanahan says. "At UCLA, I was asked one day to give a lecture on gastrointestinal bacteria. I was asked to do it because no one else would and I was the new boy. So it got passed to me, but I found it absolutely fascinating. I saw a whole new, magical area of biology that had to be relevant, yet was being neglected," he recalls fondly.

In preparing for the lecture, Shanahan stumbled across old papers on research done on animals bred to have no bacteria at all in their intestines. "You could see the profound effect of the bacteria on the immune system." The "germ-free" animals were more susceptible to disease and suffered endless bouts of illness, and died early. Entranced, Shanahan read everything he could find on the topic, gave an enthusiastic lecture to the UCLA medical students, and received a standing ovation. He had found his passion.

On finishing his fellowship, he was appointed to an adjunct professorship of medicine at UCLA and would spend a decade in California. The final four years were spent at associate professor level with an established research team working on projects grounded in that first insight: the crucial role of intestinal bacterial in human health.

"I loved it," he says of his California years and the lively intellectual cut and thrust at the school of medicine. "There was a critical mass [and] loads of people. You were never more than two minutes away from a conflicting opinion."

Then at the height of his career, Ireland suddenly called. "The opportunity came to go back to Ireland. I'd say the encouragement I got was from local scientists at UCC who said, 'come back and we'll work with you.'" But, why would Shanahan leave what many would see as a top-notch position to return to pre-Celtic Tiger, underfunded Ireland? "I don't really know. Maybe it's a homing gene," he jokes. He admits that one colleague told him that returning to Ireland would be "academic suicide."

Shanahan took on the new roles of professor and chair of the Department of Medicine at UCC, and consulting physician and gastroenterologist at Cork University Hospital. The first few years were very tough, he says now. Nevertheless, he says he produced more publications in that time than he ever did at UCLA, and slowly he began to assemble the team that would make a global mark in the field of intestinal inflammation.

In 1995 Shanahan received initial funding for group research in inflammatory bowel disease, and this work culminated in 2003 with the establishment of the €16.5 million ($25.5 million US) Alimentary Pharmabiotic Center, a Science Foundation Ireland-funded center of excellence with backing from Alimentary Health Ltd. and Procter and Gamble. With recent interest in 'bio' foods for the gut, the food industry has been a supporter of the center, but Shanahan notes that the possibility of new pharmaceuticals emerging from their research is a key goal. "The reason we introduced the term 'pharmabiotic' was to reflect this progression from bugs to drugs," he says.

Shanahan's group has published extensively, with recent work directed at the interaction between the mucosal immune system and bacterial flora, and cancer immunology research that examines micrometastases and mechanisms of immune evasion.

"Fergus is a physician-scientist. He's a full-spectrum researcher with a full spread of science behind him, but focused on the patient, too," says Ena Prosser, a member of the Advisory Science Council of Ireland.

A hallmark of Shanahan's approach is collaboration and partnership across medical departments and institutions, disciplines, and nationalities. "It's very unusual to have high-level scientists working together in this area," says Frank Gannon, the director of Science Foundation Ireland. "You need to have someone who understands the clinical side and the pharmacological. Fergus has fantastic leadership ability. He's someone who can speak the language of so many people: technicians, scientists, industry. He speaks the dialects of science."