Primary Job Title Professorial Research Fellow Primary Organization 
University of Queensland
Location Queensland, Australia, Oceania Regions Asia-Pacific (APAC), Australasia Gender Male
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Prof. King is a pioneer in the field of venoms-based drug discovery, in particular the development of peptide therapeutics and insecticides from spider venoms. His work has been instrumental in unravelling the structural and functional complexity of spider venoms, the roles played by different classes of peptide toxins in prey immobilisation, and
the mechanism by which spiders evolved complex repertoires of venom peptides. Prof. King is an inventor on 12 patents describing novel bioactive peptides, and he is the sole founder of Vestaron Corporation (www.vestaron.com), an agricultural biotech company that is using IP developed in his lab to produce eco-friendly peptide-based insecticides. Prof. King’s current research is focused on the development of peptide drugs to treat three pervasive nervous system disorders: chronic pain, epilepsy, and stroke. Prof. King is a former President of the Australian Society for Biophysics (ASB), former Chair of the Australian & New Zealand Society for Magnetic Resonance (ANZMAG), and he has been an elected member of the Executive Council of the International Society for Toxinology since 2012. Prof. King has served on the Editorial Board of six journals and he is currently Editor-in-Chief of Toxicon. Recent awards include the 2013 Beckman Coulter Discovery Science Award from the Australian Society for Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, 2013 ASB Sir Rutherford Robertson Award, 2015 ANZMAG Medal, and the 2016 IMB Impact Award for Discovery & Innovation. Prof. King has published 1 edited book, 2 co-authored textbooks, 19 book chapters, and 230 journal articles, including 10 papers in Nature-family journals since 2012.
