The leadership team consists of experienced researchers who have led or participated in national and international collaborative networks.
Professor Adam P. Croft
Professor of Translational Rheumatology and Kennedy Trust Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham
Adam Croft leads a research group focused on understanding the role of synovial pathology in the progression of inflammatory joint disease and response to treatment. His research is funded by the Wellcome Trust, Versus Arthritis, and the Kennedy Trust for Rheumatology Research. He leads a paediatric collaborative network involving the Universities of Oxford, Birmingham, and University College London, which is delivering the MAPJAG study. He has expertise in advanced synovial tissue analysis, including single-cell and spatial profiling technologies.
Professor Lucy R. Wedderburn
Professor of Paediatric Rheumatology at University College London
Lucy Wedderburn has an international reputation in the study of juvenile idiopathic arthritis, focusing on disease pathogenesis and the prediction of treatment response and disease severity. She is the Chief Investigator of the UK Research and Innovation-funded CLUSTER consortium, a stratified medicine initiative involving more than 5,000 cases of juvenile idiopathic arthritis. She is the Head of the Inflammation and Rheumatology Section at University College London and the academic lead of the juvenile idiopathic arthritis research program at the UCL-Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, Europe’s largest paediatric rheumatology centre. She is also Deputy Director of the Great Ormond Street Hospital National Institute for Health and Care Research-funded Biomedical Research Centre. Additionally, she directs the UK Centre for Adolescent Rheumatology, a multi-institutional initiative supported by Versus Arthritis and Great Ormond Street Hospital funding.
Professor Kimme Hyrich
Professor of Epidemiology at the Versus Arthritis UK Centre for Epidemiology, University of Manchester
Kimme Hyrich is an internationally recognised epidemiologist with expertise in pharmacoepidemiology and outcomes research in childhood arthritis. She is the Chief Investigator of the Childhood Arthritis Prospective Study, a cohort study tracking the long-term outcomes of more than 1,500 children diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis in the UK. She also leads the UK juvenile idiopathic arthritis biologics register, which monitors the effectiveness and safety of biologic treatments in more than 3,000 children. She co-leads the Medical Research Council-funded CLUSTER consortium with Lucy Wedderburn.
Dr. Samantha Chippington
Consultant Paediatric Interventional Radiologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Samantha Chippington is the clinical lead for interventional radiology and the training programme director at Great Ormond Street Hospital. She also serves as the Deputy Head of the London School of Radiology. Her work focuses on paediatric interventional radiology techniques and training the next generation of specialists in the field.
Dr Brian Marsden
Associate Professor of Research Informatics at the Kennedy Institute and Centre for Medicines Discovery, University of Oxford
Brian Marsden leads a research team specialising in data management, sharing, and the integration of multimodal data in early-stage drug discovery and translational research. He has expertise in the capture and dissemination of complex molecular and clinical datasets using interactive platforms such as tranSMART, REDCap, Cellxgene, and Shiny. He leads data management strategy and implementation in several large international consortia, including EUbOPEN and the Structural Genomics Consortium.
Dr Calliope Dendrou
Sir Henry Dale Fellow and Principal Investigator at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford
Calliope Dendrou’s research focuses on identifying common pathophysiological mechanisms across immune-mediated inflammatory diseases to enable translational applications. Her work incorporates functional genetics and genomics approaches and is funded by the Wellcome Trust, Royal Society, Medical Research Council, Janssen, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Rosetrees Trust, and Nimbus Therapeutics. She contributes to multiple research initiatives investigating immune-mediated inflammatory diseases using single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, including the MAPJAG study and TAURUS studies. She leads the analytical aspects of the TAURUS study and the Oxford-Janssen Cartography project, applying high-throughput and high-resolution immunoprofiling techniques.P
Professor Andrew Filer
Professor of Translational Rheumatology and Honorary Consultant Rheumatologist, University of Birmingham
Andrew Filer leads a research programme focused on inflammatory arthritis, with a particular interest in the role of synovial tissue in disease mechanisms and treatment response. He has played a key role in advancing the use of minimally invasive ultrasound-guided synovial biopsy techniques to obtain longitudinal samples from patients. He leads trials in inflammatory arthritis through the National Institute for Health and Care Research Birmingham Biomedical Research Centre and the collaborative Oxford-Birmingham Arthritis Therapy Acceleration Programme. He is the academic lead for Birmingham Tissue Analytics, which integrates digital pathology and spatial tissue analysis with transcriptomic data for collaborative projects with academia and industry. He remains an active collaborator in the United States National Institutes of Health-funded Accelerating Medicines Partnership and has trained clinicians in biopsy techniques for international research networks. He co-chairs the European League Against Rheumatism European Synovitis Study Group, coordinating clinician-scientist collaborations and training initiatives in tissue analysis and clinical trials.
