Experts in the Hot Seat: Targeting the Cytokine Pathway in RA Management

Peter C. Taylor, PhD, holds the Norman Collison chair of musculoskeletal sciences at the University of Oxford and is a Fellow of St. Peter's College, Oxford. He is the Director of Clinical Sciences and the Biomedical Research Unit inflammation theme at the Botnar Research Centre and leads the rheumatology clinical trials group at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology within the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences.
 
Professor Taylor was formerly Professor of Experimental Rheumatology at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology Division, Imperial College London and Dean of the Charing Cross campus. He studied pre-clinical medical sciences at Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge and his first degree was in Physiology. He subsequently studied clinical medicine at the University of Oxford and was awarded a PhD from the University of London for studies on pathogenesis of arthritis.
 
Professor Taylor was appointed Medical Director of the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society, a patient-led charity that works tirelessly to support patients with rheumatoid arthritis and juvenile inflammatory arthritis. Professor Taylor chairs the UK government and NIHR Translational Research Partnership in rheumatology that brings together the UK's leading academic and clinical centres for experimental medicine and translational research into a ready-formed partnership of Universities and NHS hospitals. He was nominated as a distinguished member of the British Society for Rheumatogy in 2016.
 
Professor Taylor has specialist clinical interests in inflammatory arthritis. He has over 20 years' experience in clinical trial design and international leadership in studies of biologic and small molecular therapies in rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis including the earliest seminal trails of anti-TNF and anti-IL-6 receptor therapy. His research expertise is in mechanisms sustaining inflammation and clinical trials of new therapies with development of novel outcome measurements for application in assessment of response to therapy, including ultrasonographic and high-field magnetic resonance imaging technology. In experimental medicine studies, Professor Taylor employs targeted therapies as probes of pathogenesis to investigate the in vivo biology of the target in the pathobiology of the disease phenotype under investigation. His interest in novel outcome measures also includes new tools for the personalized assessment of well-being which can be used adjunctively to clinical outcome measures in informing management decisions.

Thomas Dörner, MD, PhD, is a board certified rheumatologist and clinical immunologist as well as doctor of transfusion medicine and hemostaseology. He is a professor of rheumatology and clinical immunology at Charite University Hospitals Berlin, Germany, and group leader of the B cell memory group at the German Research Center of Rheumatology Berlin. He qualified in medicine in 1990 at Charite University Hospitals Berlin and received his board certification in internal medicine in 1995 before undertaking a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, where he researched delineating molecular aspects of the B cell receptor gene usage.

Currently he has a professorship for innovative therapeutics in autoimmune diseases at Charite Universitätsmedizin Berlin. His current main research topics comprise translational projects in autoimmune diseases with a main focus on the role of B cells, the interrelationship of coagulation during immune activation and searching for biomarkers of therapeutic responses.

Professor Dörner has received a number of international and national awards, including the Senior Scholar Award of the American Society of Rheumatology, the H Schultze Award of the German League against Rheumatism, the Schoen Award of the German Society of Rheumatology and the Fischer Prize by the NIH.

Professor Dörner has served as a member of editorial boards of leading journals in rheumatology, including Arthritis & Rheumatism, Arthritis Research & Therapy, Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, Lupus Science and Medicine, Global Arthritis Research Network (GARN), Current Reviews in Rheumatology, Brazilian Journal of Rheumatology, Rheumatology Reviews, European Journal of Immunology, and Zeitschrift für Rheumatologie.

Juan Gómez-Reino, MD, PhD, is Professor of Medicine and Chief of Rheumatology at the Hospital Clinico Universitario at the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago, Spain. Previously, he served as chief of the Department of Research and Section of Rheumatology at Hospital Universitario Doce de Octubre, Madrid, Spain.

Dr Gómez-Reino earned his medical and doctoral degrees at the University of Madrid, Spain. His postgraduate training in internal medicine and rheumatology was completed at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.

Dr Gómez-Reino's clinical focus is on rheumatoid arthritis, spondyloarthrosis, and connective tissue diseases. His main research interest is in chronic inflammatory arthropathies. He has authored or co-authored many original articles and papers on rheumatoid arthritis, spondyloarthrosis, and other chronic rheumatic disorders. He is the head of the steering committee of the Spanish registry of biologics, BIOBADASER, which launched in 2000.