Secrets of the enzyme Obituary: Malcolm Lilly 1

• Published in: The Guardian (London)
• Main Author: Clarke, Patricia H
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: London (UK) Guardian News & Media Limited 18.06.1998
• ISSN: 0261-3077; 1756-3224

[Malcolm Lilly]'s early work on the properties of enzymes immobilised by attachment to resin beads had particular importance. Immobilised enzymes have increased stability and can be used in commercial bioreactors for longer periods. One of the early successes at UCL was using an immobilised bacterial enzyme for the production of semi- synthetic penicillins. He researched biotransformation throughout his career, but also worked on other topics including mammalian cell culture, nucleotide isolation and biological fuel cells. Geoff Potter writes: I first met Malcolm Lilly in the late 1960s and over the next two decades, as director for biotechnology in the Science and Engineering Research Council, I witnessed and provided support for the development of the first centre for biochemical engineering at UCL, which played an important part in ensuring that Britain was one of the world leaders in biotechnology research. Malcolm, together with [Peter Dunnill], also fought the long battle to gain acceptance of biochemical engineering as an academic discipline in its own right. In the struggle for funding, biologists would often see biotechnology as only involving recombinant DNA technology plus biochemistry and microbiology. There was no engineering component.