David Pisetsky, MD, PhD
U.S. Bone & Joint Initiative president-elect
Carol Nachman Prize winner announced
George Kollias is a biologist, member of the Academy of Athens, professor of experimental physiology at the Medical School of the University of Athens and director of the Immunology Division at the Biomedical Sciences Research Center “Alexander Fleming,” where he served as president and scientific director from 2002–2010.
The Carol Nachman Prize “recognizes outstanding research and innovation achievements, aiming to promote clinical, therapeutic and experimental research in [rheumatology].” This international prize has been awarded every year since 1972 for excellence in rheumatism-related research. Funded by the city of Wiesbaden, Germany, the prize is named for a former concessionaire of the Wiesbaden Casino.
As the award text says, “Prof. Kollias’ studies demonstrated that tumor necrosis factor (TNF) is a key molecule in the development of rheumatoid arthritis and other chronic inflammatory diseases. He established the genetically modified animal model for rheumatoid arthritis (a human TNF-alpha transgenic mouse), thus creating the basis for the successful introduction of effective biological therapy principles for the neutralisation of TNF for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and other rheumatism-related diseases.”
For more than 20 years, from the beginning of his independent research to today, Dr. Kollias has studied the different layers of TNF function in the immune system. He’s studied the molecule in different animal models and in different diseases, such as arthritis, Crohn’s disease and multiple sclerosis. His lab has studied how TNF functions in different diseases. The research led him to understand that “skin, joint and gut diseases are all connected,” he says.
He was the first to create an animal model of TNF; those models are distributed to laboratories—both industrial and academic—around the world. He identified the function of TNF in the immune system by studying the side effects a knockout mouse experienced. “The impact of our research persuaded the pharmaceutical industry to reassess the hitherto ineffective (against sepsis) anti-TNF biological therapies and to target them toward rheumatoid arthritis,” says Dr. Kollias.
Dr. Kollias is credited with providing knowledge of the molecular mechanisms underlying chronic inflammatory disease development and translating those findings into groundbreaking treatments for a spectrum of diseases. The Kollias lab performed studies that established TNF as “a key molecule in the development of rheumatoid arthritis, spondyloarthropathies, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, systemic lupus erythematosus and septic shock,” according to the Carol Nachman Prize nomination paper.
In addition to heading up his own lab, Dr. Kollias is involved in developing biomedical infrastructures of scientific and technological excellence at a national and European level that have contributed decisively to the support of a new generation of Greek scientists. He has published more than 150 primary research articles, and his work has been cited more than 23,000 times.
Felipe Andrade, MD, PhD
Disease-Targeted Innovative Research Grant recipient
Felipe Andrade, of The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, received one of the Rheumatology Research Foundation’s 2014 Disease Targeted Innovative Research Grants. Dr. Andrade’s funded research will attempt to identify new antibodies in the blood or biomarkers that recognize PAD2 and PAD3 enzymes and to determine how the biomarkers relate to clinical features, treatment result and disease severity. Dr. Andrade will also conduct experiments to learn how the antibodies produce rheumatoid arthritis damage. Being able to predict the clinical features and disease severity should allow a rheumatologist to customize treatment for a patient’s individual case.
Lauren Ashley Henderson, MD, MMSc
Scientist Development Award winner
Lauren Henderson, pediatric rheumatologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, recently received the Rheumatology Research Foundation’s Scientist Development Award. The award monies will fund her research to explore how T cells influence autoimmunity. She will analyze, through next-generation sequencing, the repertoire of synovial fluid and peripheral blood Treg and Teff cells in juvenile idiopathic arthritis. This award, on the heels of a Young Investigator Award from Adaptive Biotechnologies in 2013, gives her the opportunity to further her research career. As a young researcher, Dr. Henderson shares her accomplishments with her mentors Luigi Notarangelo, MD, Peter Nigrovic, MD, and Robert Fuhlbrigge, MD, PhD.
For a complete list of Foundation award recipients, see From the College, The Rheumatologist, September 2014.
Ann-Marie Lindstrom is an independent writer and editor based in the Tucson, Ariz., area.
