See/Download the Final Announcement here

Speakers Biographies

Judith Adams

Judith Adams is Consultant Radiologist, Manchester Royal Infirmary and Honorary Professor of Diagnostic Radiology, Imaging Science & Biomedical Engineering (ISBE) at the University of Manchester, UK. She is a musculo-skeletal radiologist with a particular interest in metabolic bone disease (especially osteoporosis) and quantitative assessment of the skeleton. Her publications include 155 scientific papers, 20 reviews and 23 chapters and she has collaborated in £3M research grants in past 8 years. Professor Adams has served as Dean (Vice President) of the Royal College Radiologists, Chairman of the Osteoporosis Group of the European Society of Skeletal Radiology (ESSR) and of the National Osteoporosis Society (NOS) Bone Densitometry Forum.

Thomas Aigner

Following studies in philosophy and theology in Munich Dr Aigner went on to study medicine at the Friedrich-Alexander-University in Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, spending a year in Birmingham in 1991/92. Dr Aigner was Head of the Osteoarticular and Arthritis Research Group (Department of Pathology) in Erlangen from 1996-2006 and in March 2006 he became Deputy Director of the Institute of Pathology at the University of Leipzig. He became Professor of Pathology in November 2007. His research interests are in cell biology of the (aging) skeleton, functional genomics of osteoarthritis, tissue engineering, matrix biochemistry and pathology, and neoplasias of the skeleton.

Patrick Ammann

Patrick Ammann is an internist with a subspecialty focus on metabolic bone diseases, osteoporosis and disorders of mineral metabolism. He is presently Head of the preclinical investigation group of osteoporosis and bone metabolism at the Division of Bone Diseases in the Department of Rehabilitation and Geriatrics of the Geneva Hospitals, Switzerland. He is involved in both basic and clinical research investigating skeletal development, pathophysiology of osteoporosis, effect of nutrition and antiosteoporotic treatments on bone mechanical properties and their determinants (including intrinsic bone tissue quality). A special focus on mandibular osteoporosis and implant osseointegration are other recent interests. He is also in charge of a rehabilitation unit for patients with osteoporotic fractures. He has received numerous awards, both international and national, for his contribution to the understanding of metabolic bone disease pathophysiology.

Kay Colston

After gaining a PhD in the Endocrine Unit at Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London, Dr Colston undertook postdoctoral studies at Stanford University Medical Center, California, working on characterization and tissue distribution of vitamin D receptors. She is now Reader in Clinical Biochemistry and Metabolism at St George's University of London. Current research interests include anti-tumour effects of vitamin D and studies on cancer-induced bone disease.

Georg Duda

Prof Dr Georg N Duda is director of the Julius Wolff Institute and member of the Centre for Musculoskeletal Surgery at the Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany. His research interest is mainly focused on biomechanical aspects of musculoskeletal healing and regeneration, and the development of new methods to document healing progress. In particular, the effect of physical effects on the endogenous regeneration pathway is evaluated using biomechanical, histological and molecular biological methods.

Born and raised in Berlin, Professor Duda graduated from the Technical University, Berlin in 1991. He began his career at the biomechanics laboratory of the Mayo Clinic, USA, received his PhD from the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, continued at the John-Hopkins-University, USA and the Institute of Orthopaedic Research and Biomechanics in Ulm. In 1997, he returned to Berlin and established a network on musculoskeletal healing:
Basic research is performed in the clinical research group “Bone Healing” (DFG KFO 102) and the collaborative research centre “Musculoskeletal Regeneration” (DFG SFB 760). Translational research is focussed in the BMBF funded “Berlin-Brandenburg Centre for Regenerative Therapies (BCRT)”. These centres are complemented by a PhD graduate school (DFG GSC 203).

Bill Fraser

Professor Bill Fraser was born and educated in Glasgow, graduating from Glasgow University with BSc (Hons) MBChB and MD (Hons). He trained in Glasgow’s teaching hospitals before spending time as a consultant/travelling fellow in Canada.

In 1991 he was appointed Senior Lecturer in Chemical Pathology and Head of the Metabolic Bone Disease Unit at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, promoted to Reader in 1998, Professor in 2001, and Head of the Unit of Clinical Chemistry in 2008. He supervises a very active research group investigating the diagnosis and treatment of metabolic bone disease including osteoporosis and Paget’s Disease of bone.

Bill Fraser is on the Editorial Board of several journals, a Director of the Supra Regional Assay Service for bone metabolism and calcium homeostasis, and a Medical Advisor to the National Osteoporosis Society. He was the recipient of the ACB Foundation Award for 2006.

Mark Lunt

After completing an MSc in Medical Statistics, Mark began his academic career as a statistician with the European Prospective Osteoporosis Study (EPOS), based at the Institute of Health in Cambridge, in 1992, where he worked on the epidemiology of low bone density and vertebral fracture. In 1999, he moved to the Arthritis Research Campaign Epidemiology Unit in Manchester. Here he continued his work on osteoporosis and vertebral deformity, but also developed new interests in the epidemiology of rheumatic disease. He completed a PhD with the Open University in 2003, entitled "Statistical methods of detecting vertebral fractures". Most recently, his primary focus has been on methods of making causal inferences from observational data: to this end, the academic year 2006-2007 was spent on sabbatical with the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard University, Boston.

David Marsh

David Marsh is Professor of Clinical Orthopaedics, UCL Institute of Orthopaedics and Musculoskeletal Science at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore. After studying medical sciences at Cambridge University he was awarded his MB BCh in 1975 and FRCS in 1980. In 1990 he was awarded his MD from the University of Cambridge. After working as Wellcome Research Fellow at the Physiological Laboratory at the University of Cambridge he became Lecturer in Orthopaedics at the University of Manchester. He then spent several years as Professor of Trauma and Orthopaedics at Queens University in Belfast before moving to Stanmore in 2005. His research interests focus on the biology of fracture healing and distraction osteogenesis; tissue engineering of bone; treatment of osteoporosis and fragility fractures; clinical trials of fracture treatment; and measurement of outcome in fractures and limb reconstruction.

Andrew Pitsillides

Andrew Pitsillides graduated with a BSC (Hons) degree in Applied Biology in 1984, before studying for a PhD whilst at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology (1988). His work at the Kennedy included studies on cell biochemistry and function in various joint tissues, including human synovium, cartilage and animal models of inflammation. He later worked in the Rheumatology unit, UCL Medical School, where he pursued the mechanisms regulating extracellular matrix glycosaminoglycan synthesis, which he extended to include cell: matrix cross-talk in his studies focused on embryonic joint cavity formation. His move to the Royal Veterinary College in 1993 and a lectureship in 1994 coincided with the extension of his studies to include the role of mechanical influences in these early events, essential for the development of the skeletal system and in the control of adult bone remodelling. Much of this work in bone focused on defining novel roles for soluble autocoids, including nitric oxide, in communicating the mechanomodulatory osteogenic/anti-resorptive effects of load-bearing and centred on the contribution of the osteocyte to spatial control of these events. He was appointed Reader in 2006 and his group’s work has recently focused on defining the cell-signalling events that underpin the close relationship between cells and their matrix and changes in load-induced responses in the developing, growing and ageing skeletal system. His description of novel model systems for manipulating embryonic mobility in ovo and for applying controlled mechanical stimuli to joint and bone tissues in vivo offer powerful new tools for exploring the means by which local mechanical events are converted to signals that can fashion changes in cell matrix synthesis and behaviour.

James Richardson

From early on I was keen to specialise in Orthopaedics and have been fortunate to work in a range of hospitals in the UK and abroad. Aberdeen was where I graduated in Medicine in 1977 and then I began working in Orthopaedics. I have worked at Elgin, Inverness, Oxford, Glasgow and Leicester as well as training here at Oswestry during my specialist registrar training. I returned to Oswestry in 1994 to take up the post of Professor of Orthopaedics and specialising in lower limb surgery. In Oxford I researched fracture healing and my MD Thesis was on the same. I have a monthly specialist clinic for patients with problem fractures and non-unions and provide Lautenbach procedure for infected cases. I am now running a trial in mesenchymal stem cell therapy for non-union of fractures in the long bone (tib/fib and femur). Oswestry is the only hospital offering this service in the UK and we have now treated over 10 patients. With the expertise of our scientists and the help of a local charity, the Institute of Orthopaedics, a cartilage cell service producing chondrocytes has been running for a number of years and well over 200 patients have been treated for local chondral defects using autologous chondrocyte cell implantation (ACI).

Sandra Shefelbine

Dr Sandra J Shefelbine is a lecturer at Imperial College London in the Department of Bioengineering. She has a BSE in Mechanical Engineering from Princeton University, an MPhil in Engineering Design from Cambridge, and a PhD from Stanford University in Mechanical Engineering. She was a National Science Foundation International Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Orthopaedic Research in Ulm, Germany, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Radiology at University of California in San Francisco. Her research in mechanobiology examines how the mechanical environment affects the musculoskeletal system during growth, fracture healing, and aging.

Harri Sievänen

Dr Harri Sievänen, ScD, is senior scientist and head of the Bone Research Group, UKK Institute, Tampere, Finland. He also holds posts of Adjunct Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the Tampere University Medical School and Adjunct Professor in Biomechanics at the Department of Biomedical Engineering of the Tampere University of Technology. His research interests are in various aspects of clinical and experimental bone research, including physical activity and exercise, whole body vibration training, and imaging methods for analysing and modelling the bone structure. During his 20 year scientific career, he has authored or co-authored more than 160 peer-reviewed scientific articles and supervised more than 10 doctoral studies.

Alan Silman

Professor Silman is the first Medical Director of the UK Arthritis Research Campaign (ARC) having been appointed in January 2007. Prior to this from 1988 he was Director of the ARC’s Epidemiology Unit based at Manchester University and Professor of Rheumatic Disease Epidemiology at the same institution. He is also a consultant rheumatologist at the Manchester Royal Infirmary with a subspecialty interest in the management of Behcet’s disease.

Professor Silman has had an extensive research career and has published widely in the fields of the epidemiology and genetic epidemiology of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), outcome studies in RA, epidemiological studies of osteoporotic fracture and of both regional and widespread musculoskeletal pain disorders. He has also has had major research interests in scleroderma and Behcet’s disease. More recently he has been involved in assessment of drug safety and was the initiator and joint principle investigator of the British Society of Rheumatology Biologics Register.

He has published over 500 peer reviewed papers. He was the joint author of Epidemiology of the Rheumatic Diseases and is one of the five editors of the international textbook Rheumatology (5th Edition, Elsevier). He is on the editorial board of several international rheumatology journals.

Currently he is also a member of the Executive of the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) and Chairman of their Standing Committee on Epidemiology. In the UK, amongst other responsibilities he is a member of the Pharmacovigilence Expert Advisory Group of the Medicinal and Health Products Regulatory Agency and chairs the Ministry of Defence Oversight Committee on research of the health of servicemen in the current Iraq war. He is chairman of the epidemiology sub-panel for the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise. He has served on a number of research boards of the major UK research funders such as the Medical Research Council and Wellcome Trust.

Hans van Leeuwen

Hans (JPTM) van Leeuwen is Professor of Calcium and Bone Metabolism and Head of the Bone and Calcium Research group, The Department of Internal Medicine, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His main research targets are: a) mesenchymal stem cell and osteoclast differentiation and identification of regulatory mechanisms herein by systems biological approaches; b) extracellular matrix formation and mineralization; c) mechanism of action of steroid hormones and interaction with non-steroid hormone signaling mechanisms; d) transcellular calcium transport processes in mineralization and bone resorption; e) genetic risk factors for skeletal disorders.

Rob Wakeman

I was appointed as a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon to Basildon University Hospital in 1994. I developed an interest in hip fracture audit through participation in the Royal College of Surgeons audit of 1995 -7 and, in 2003, I started concurrent audit on all hip fracture patients aged fifty and over who were treated at Basildon. In 2006 I was appointed to the NHS Institute’s Developing Quality and Value team, looking at the hip fracture pathway. I have been involved with the NHFD since 2004, and have been employed as one of the part time Clinical Leads since 2007.

Richard Whitehouse

Dr Richard Whitehouse has been a consultant musculoskeletal radiologist at Manchester Royal Infirmary since 1991, prior to which he worked as a research fellow in computed tomography at Manchester Medical School, where he also investigated various techniques of bone mineral density measurement. His MD thesis was on dual energy quantitative computed tomography. He is a member of the International Skeletal Society and the British and European societies of Skeletal Radiology. He has been performing vertebroplasty for eight years and recently introduced kyphoplasty to the interventional musculoskeletal procedures he performs.