Denis Anthony Mitchison was a British bacteriologist.
12 Facts About Denis Mitchison
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Denis Mitchison was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, and Abbotsholme School, going on to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied natural science, obtaining a 1st class degree and a senior scholarship.
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In September 1940, Denis Mitchison married Ruth Gill at Carradale in Argyll, Scotland.
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In 1954 Naomi Denis Mitchison wrote the fantasy book Graeme and the Dragon, in which the protagonist is her grandson, Graeme Denis Mitchison.
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Denis Mitchison then continued his lifelong interest in the treatment of TB, participating in the clinical trials organised by the Medical Research Council's Tuberculosis Research Unit with Director Philip D'Arcy Hart.
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Denis Mitchison then worked closely with D'Arcy Hart at the MRC TRU and later with Wallace Fox, director of the MRC Tuberculosis and Chest Diseases Research Unit, on developing effective treatment for TB at a cost sufficiently low to be affordable in developing countries.
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Denis Mitchison established specialist TB laboratories in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and a central laboratory in Hong Kong.
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Denis Mitchison developed the technique of measuring the early bactericidal activity of drugs, which is standard practice as the initial step in the phase II of clinical development of new drugs with Amina Jindani and colleagues in South Africa.
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Denis Mitchison introduced the concept of the 8-week phase II study with the proportion of patients obtaining negative sputum culture at 8 weeks, a standard assessment in most such studies.
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Denis Mitchison worked on several new anti-TB drugs and participated in clinical trials on high dosage rifamycins.
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Denis Mitchison finally stopped regular work at the age of 95.
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Denis Mitchison died in Kingston in July 2018 at the age of 98 of bilateral pulmonary embolism.