| Convenors |
Rheumatoid arthritis
Convened
by Prof Iain McInnes, University of Glasgow, Glasgow
Iain McInnes is Director of the Institute of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation in the University of Glasgow and was recently appointed as the Muirhead Professor of Medicine. He studied medicine at the University of Glasgow before training in internal medicine and rheumatology in Glasgow and at the NIH, Bethesda. Professor McInnes obtained his PhD in Immunology and thereafter conducted post-doctoral studies in NIH and in Glasgow.
Professor McInnes has contributed substantial new knowledge to the field of cytokine biology and vascular co-morbidity in both RA and psoriatic arthritis. His work has been recognised in receipt of many prizes and lectureships including the Michael Mason prize 2001 and Droitwich lecture 2011, both from the British Society for Rheumatology, the Albrecht Hasinger Lectureship 2002, Berlin, Nana Swartz Lectureship 2008, Swedish Medical Association, the Feng Pao Hsii Lecture 2011 from the Singapore – Malaysian Society for Rheumatology and the Cochrane Lecturer in Alabama. He has published more than 150 articles in peer-reviewed journals and has given numerous plenary and invited lectures at EULAR and ACR Scientific Congresses.
Professor McInnes has served as vice-chair of the Medical Research Council Panel for Fellowships and Training and is Director of the Medical Research Council Scottish Clinical Pharmacology and Pathology Training Programme and Deputy Director of the Scottish Translational Medicine and Therapeutics Initiative. He is a previous chairman of the EULAR Scientific Committee, member of the ACR scientific committee and Chair of the EULAR Standing Committee for Clinical Affairs. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2008, and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2012.
Ankylosing spondylitis
Convened
by Dr Martin Rudwaleit, MD,
Consultant in Rheumatology, University Hospital Charité – Campus Benjamin
Franklin in Berlin, Germany.
Over the last few years, Dr Rudwaleit has become involved in clinical trials and in the research of clinical aspects of ankylosing spondylitis and other spondyloarthritides, including epidemiology, outcome assessments, imaging modalities, predictive parameters, classification and diagnosis of early disease. He is the Principal Coordinator of the German Spondyloarthritis Inception Cohort, a prospective longitudinal observational study on very early spondyloarthritis.
Systemic lupus erythematosus
Convened
by Prof David D'Cruz MD FRCP, Consultant Rheumatologist, The Louise Coote
Lupus Unit, St Thomas' Hospital.
Training: St Mary's Hospital Medical School London, University College, St Bartholomew's and the Royal London Hospitals and St Thomas' Hospital. Appointed Senior Lecturer in Rheumatology at St Bartholomew's and The Royal London Hospitals following a Senior Registrar post there.
Publications: 150 research papers, 65 reviews and 15 book chapters. He is one of the Managing Editors of the journal Lupus. President of the Rheumatology Section of the Royal Society of Medicine 2008-9.
Scleroderma
Convened
by Prof Christopher Denton PhD FRCP, Royal Free
Hospital and UCL Medical School, London, UK
Christopher Denton is Professor of Experimental Rheumatology at UCL and Consultant Rheumatologist at the Centre for Rheumatology, Royal Free Hospital, London. Professor Denton’s laboratory research has focused on mediators of vasculopathy and fibrosis in connective tissue disease and preclinical models. He leads the large clinical programme in scleroderma at the Royal Free Hospital and co-ordinates multidisciplinary care for more than 1200 patients. The scleroderma centre has played a prominent role in many recent clinical studies in scleroderma, Raynaud’s phenomenon and connective tissue disease associated pulmonary hypertension.
He studied medicine at Guy’s Hospital in London, where he qualified with distinction and later obtained a PhD from University College London. Following a Wellcome Trust Advanced Fellowship in molecular genetics at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, USA, he was appointed as a senior lecturer at UCL and consultant in rheumatology at the Royal Free Hospital in 2000, and promoted to professor in 2006.
He currently chairs the UK Scleroderma Study Group (UKSSG), is Treasurer of EUSTAR (EULAR Scleroderma Trials and Research group) and past-President of the Scleroderma Clinical Trials Consortium (SCTC). He is chair of the Heberden Committee of the British Society for Rheumatology (BSR) and has published extensively on laboratory and clinical aspects of connective tissue disease and pulmonary hypertension.
