Imperial Collage, London, Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology Division

The Kennedy Institute has been a major driving force behind the development of targeted biological therapy for autoimmune disease, namely TNF blockade using monoclonal antibodies. Under the leadership of Professors Ravinder Maini and Marc Feldmann, targeting TNF was taken from early pre-clinical development into an important therapy for a series of autoimmune diseases in a remarkably short time. Harnessing this experience and combining it with expertise in autoantibody profiling, proteomics, mass spectrometry and T cell biology, the Kennedy Institute will now contribute to the consortium by coordinating two workpackages focussing on defining serum autoantibody profiles for diagnosis and prognosis in inflammatory arthritis and myositis, as well as further developing targeted therapy with an emphasis on subsets of effector T cells as cellular therapeutic targets. The partner will also be responsible for coordinating activities between the consortium and BMD, a French biotechnology company with an established track record in the field of diagnostics in autoimmunity.

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