IMID Forum Chair
Iain McInnes
Vice Principal and Head of College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences (MVLS)
Iain McInnes is Head of College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences, and Vice Principal, University of Glasgow, and serves also as the Muirhead Professor of Medicine and Versus Arthritis Professor of Rheumatology in the University.
He is Director of the Versus Arthritis Centre of Excellence for Inflammatory Arthritis, lead from the University of Glasgow that includes Universities of Oxford, Newcastle and Birmingham. He serves as a member of the Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board. He is a Trustee on the Board of Versus Arthritis. He is past chairman of the Foreum (Foundation for European Rheumatology Research) Scientific Committee, lead the European Roadmap programme that is defining the research agenda for European rheumatology for the next decade and is Past-President of the European Alliance of Rheumatology Asssociations (EULAR). Under these auspices he led the creation of the first pan-European Rheumatology Research Centre launched in 2021.
His work is mainly focused upon the understanding of the pathogenesis of immune mediated inflammatory diseases and encompasses basic discovery immunology through phase 1 and proof of concept experimental medicine clinical trials to leadership of pivotal phase 3 trials in the area of immune biology. His laboratory group performed original discovery work supporting the therapeutic targeting of a several inflammatory cytokines.
More recently he has focused on the biology of myeloid cells in the pathogenesis of a number of immune diseases. He has served on a number of scientific advisory groups adjacent to the pharmaceutical industry, mainly in the area of development of novel immune modifying agents. He has published >550 peer-reviewed original and review articles with an h-index of >130 equating to around 100,000 citations. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2019 by HM Queen Elizabeth II.
Rheumatology Chair
Sofia Ramiro
Consultant Rheumatologist and Senior Researcher
Dr. Ramiro is a consultant rheumatologist and senior researcher at Leiden University Medical Centre and Zuyderland Medical Centre, the Netherlands. Dr. Ramiro also has an appointment at Nova Medical School in Lisbon as a Visiting Professor.
She obtained her PhD on long-term outcomes in axial spondyloarthritis at the University of Amsterdam before going on to complete her specialist rheumatology training at Leiden University Medical Centre. She is a clinical epidemiologist focusing on outcomes research. Her main interests are axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), imaging and methodological and analytical aspects.
Sofia Ramiro currently has an appointment at Nova Medical School in Lisbon as a Visiting Professor. Sofia Ramiro served as a Chair for EMEUNET, the Emerging EULAR Network, and also of Young Assessment of Spondyloarthritis international Society (ASAS). She was a member of the EULAR Scientific Committee for 2016-2020 and is currently a member of the ASAS Executive Committee. Sofia Ramiro has been involved in many EULAR taskforces for the elaboration of recommendations, namely management of axSpA, RA, psoriatic arthritis and imaging in vasculitis. Sofia Ramiro has authored more than 250 peer-reviewed manuscripts.
Dermatology Chair
Herve Bachelez
Professor of Clinical Dermatology
Herve Bachelez is a Professor at the Department of Dermatology of the Saint-Louis University Hospital in Paris, France. Since 2004, he has been a full Professor of Clinical Dermatology at the Université Paris-Diderot/Université de Paris, where he received his PhD in Immunology in 1999.
Professor Bachelez’s clinical and research activities focus on inflammatory skin diseases, mainly psoriasis and psoriasis-related diseases, hidradenitis suppurativa, and lichen planus. He is conducting his basic and translational research at the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM U1163) in the Laboratory of Genetics of Skin Diseases at the Imagine Institute for Human Genetic Diseases in Necker Hospital, Paris. His areas of scientific research include immunogenetics and molecular mechanisms of the aforementioned immune-mediated and inflammatory skin diseases.
Professor Bachelez has received several scientific awards, including the Robert Degos Award. He is a member of several national and international scientific societies, including the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (EADV) and the European Dermatology Forum (EDF). He is the past president of the French Society for Dermatological Research and the Group for Research on Psoriasis of the French Society for Dermatology. Internationally, he is a Board Member of the International Psoriasis Council (IPC) and the past president of the European Society for Dermatological Research (ESDR).
Professor Bachelez has published over 295 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Clinical Investigation, the Lancet, and Arthritis and Rheumatism as a leading author.
Gastroenterology Chair
Tim Orchard
Consultant Gastroenterologist and appointed Chief Executive
Professor Tim Orchard is Chief Executive of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, a trust consisting of five hospitals including three major teaching hospitals. The trust has 15 000 staff and a turnover of £1.6 billion, and provides acute, specialist and community services in North West London. He is also a Consultant Gastroenterologist and Professor of Gastroenterology at Imperial College London. He has had significant leadership and management roles including running the Division of Medicine and Integrated Care, and acting as Medical Director at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. He has overseen a number of transformational projects in the trust and is working with colleagues across London to plan effective services for the needs of the future population.
He qualified from the University of Cambridge and London University before undertaking training in internal medicine and gastroenterology. He undertook research at the University of Oxford with Professor Derek Jewell, and has continued his research interests in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and extra-intestinal manifestations (EIMs). More recently he has been working with colleagues to examine the role of metabonomics in relation to IBD and the microbes in the gut, and has developed an interest in IBD in the large South Asian population in West London. He has published papers on phenotype determining genes and EIMs in IBD, urinary metabonomics and other aspects of IBD and written a number of book chapters. He has also been involved in a number of clinical trials of novel drug therapies in IBD in their population of secondary and tertiary IBD patients. He has contributed to international guidelines on IBD and on EIMs associated with IBD; and to NICE guidelines on spondyloarthritis in the UK.
Professor Orchard has previously been the Emanoel Lee Junior Research Fellow at St Cross College, University of Oxford, the Sidney Truelove Lecturer at the University of Oxford, the Archibald Clark Kennedy Lecturer at Corpus Christi College Cambridge, and has delivered a keynote address at the London Business School. He has been Chair of the British Society of Gastroenterology IBD Section, and a national representative to the European Crohn’s and Colitis Organisation, as well as chairing the BSG IBD Clinical Studies Group. He also has a particular interest in education and training, and was previously Director of Clinical Studies at St Mary’s Hospital, London, still regularly teaching clinical medical students, and was previously joint training programme director for gastroenterology in North West Thames.