David Bailey is a retired track and field athlete, who represented Canada at the 1968 Summer Olympics in the men's 1.500 metres. He was the first Canadian to run the mile in less than 4 minutes in San Diego, CA on June 11, 1966 and the first Canadian to the run the mile in less than 4 minutes in Canada in Toronto on July 22, 1967. A resident of North York, Ontario he won the bronze medal in this event at the 1967 Pan American Games and the silver medal in this event at the 1968 World University Games He was two-time Canadian Universities Track and Field Athlete of Year and two-time inductee into the University of TorontoSports Hall of Fame. He was a member of 9 Canadian National Track and Field Teams competing at World University Games, Budapest 1965 and Tokyo 1967, Commonwealth Games, Kingston, Jamaica, 1966, Pan American Games, Winnipeg, 1967, Commonwealth vs USA, Los Angeles, 1967, Pre-Olympic Games, Mexico City, 1967, Soviet Union Tour, 1968, European Tour, 1968, Olympic Games, Mexico City, 1968. David Bailey completed undergraduate studies in Pharmacy and graduate work in Pharmacology at the University of Toronto. After post-doctoral training in Pharmacology at the University of Saskatchewan and work in drug development for the pharmaceutical industry, he returned to academia in 1986 at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He is currently full Professor in the Departments of Physiology & Pharmacology and Medicine. His research focused on mechanistic and translational clinical pharmacological investigations related to drug interactions. Bailey notable publication of grapefruit – drug interactions has been cited more than 300 times. Grapefruit decreased drug metabolism in humans, which likely represented the first clinical example of a food producing such an effect. Clinically, the concern is that a single judicious amount of grapefruit ingested even many hours beforehand would noticeably boost oral drug bioavailability and cause overdose toxicity. Research findings have demonstrated that grapefruit produced a clinically relevant interaction with more than 40 medications. Formal product information for a number of highly prescribed or essential medications now warn about the risk of a grapefruit - induced adverse drug interaction. A label stating, "Do NOT take with Grapefruit Juice" is often affixed to prescription vials. Bailey's research was prominently discussed in such prestigious journals as Nature Medicine and the New England Journal of Medicine. A review article of his on the topic of grapefruit – drug interactions was republished in a special 2004 Anniversary Edition of the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, which reprinted only 14 publications that were considered of major importance over the past 30 years. A research study in the elderly received the William B Abrams Award from the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics. Dr. Bailey was the recipient of the Senior Investigator Award from the Canadian Society for Clinical Pharmacology. Moreover, this research is now well known to the public through numerous articles in the lay press. Some were in the most influential and trusted publications including The New York Times, National Geographic and the Wall Street Journal. Thus, this research has received significant scientific, clinical and mainstream stature. In recent years, Bailey has slightly shifted the focus of his research to assessing the effect of fruit juices on other potentially important mechanisms of drug absorption. Current research found that grapefruit and other juices inhibited a specific intestinal drug uptake transporter to diminish oral drug absorption discernibly in humans. The initial publication in 2002, which has been cited more than 100 times, supported a new model of intestinal drug absorption and novel mechanism of food-drug interactions. Most recently, he showed that the major flavonoid in grapefruit, naringin, was an important clinically active inhibitor of intestinal OATP1A2. This appeared to be the first example of a single dietary constituent modulating drug transport in humans.
