Alyson Fox is the Global Head of the Gastrointestinal Disease Area at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, based in Horsham, UK and Basel, Switzerland.

By taking on this responsibility Alyson is returning to her earlier scientific interests, having studied 5-HT and neuropeptide pharmacology in the GI tract during her graduate work. Following the successful completion of her PhD in 1991 at King’s College London, Alyson performed postdoctoral studies at the Sandoz Institute in London focused on understanding sensory nerve function in airway disease.  Following the award of a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship Alyson moved to the National Heart and Lung Institute, UK where she continued to investigate the phenotypic and functional plasticity of airway afferents, developing the concept of airways hypersensitivity as a correlate of somatosensory hyperalgesia.  

In 1997 she re-joined Novartis to become a lab head in pharmacology at the Chronic Pain Unit (formerly the Sandoz Institute) where she was responsible for developing and assessing in vivo models of pain.  Alyson assumed overall responsibility for pharmacology at the Chronic Pain Unit in 2000, and was promoted to Biology Unit Head in 2004.  During her time at the Chronic Pain Unit Alyson has been intimately involved in numerous drug discovery projects, from target finding and validation to Phase 2, as well as carrying out basic research into the pathophysiology of chonic pain. She has published widely in the field, including numerous papers on cannabinoids, TRP channels, bradykinin receptors and animal models.