Biographies
 

Leonard Calabrese, DO
Professor of Medicine
Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University
Vice Chairman
Department of Rheumatic & Immunologic Diseases
R.J. Fasenmyer Chair of Clinical Immunology
Cleveland Clinics
Cleveland, Ohio

Edward C. Keystone, MD, FRCP(C)
Dr. Keystone is Professor of Medicine, University of Toronto; Director, Rebecca Macdonald Centre for Arthritis and Autoimmune Disease; Director, Division of Advanced Therapeutics in Arthritis; and consultant in rheumatology, Mount Sinai Hospital/University Health Network, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Dr. Keystone obtained his Doctorate of Medicine degree from the University of Toronto in 1969.  After five years of training in rheumatology, he received specialty degrees in rheumatology and internal medicine in 1974.  He then carried out his research training at the Clinical Research Centre in Harrow, London, United Kingdom. He was a consultant rheumatologist at The Wellesley Central Hospital, Toronto, Canada, from 1976 to 1998 before taking up his current position at Mount Sinai Hospital.

Dr. Keystone’s laboratory research focuses on immune system abnormalities in rheumatoid arthritis.  In 2003, he established The Rebecca Macdonald Centre for Arthritis and Autoimmune Disease, which is devoted to research in genomics, therapeutics, and outcomes in autoimmune inflammatory joint disease. He is Director of the Centre and heads the Advanced Therapeutics Division, which focuses on novel therapeutics in rheumatoid arthritis.  Dr. Keystone founded and is a senior scientist at the Arthritis and Autoimmunity Research Centre, a multidisciplinary research centre devoted to epidemiological and translational research studies in autoimmune diseases at the University Health Network.  He is Chairman of the Canadian Rheumatology Research Consortium (CRRC), a national network of academic and community rheumatologists devoted to enhancing the scope and efficiency of clinical trials in Canada.

Dr. Keystone is the author of more than 180 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters and has received numerous teaching awards and honors, including the Senior Investigator Award of the Canadian Rheumatology Association and the American College of Rheumatology’s Grand Master Award in 2008.  He is a consultant to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry nationally and internationally, and is a member of numerous biopharmaceutical advisory boards.

Michael H. Schiff, MD
Dr. Schiff is Clinical Professor of Medicine, Rheumatology Division, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Denver, Colorado.  Dr. Schiff is board-certified in internal medicine and rheumatology and is a fellow of the American College of Rheumatology.  His primary research interest is the use of DMARDs and biologics for the management of arthritis; he has been principal investigator of more than 200 research projects and has published more than 150 peer-reviewed journal articles and scientific abstracts.

Dr. Schiff is a member of several regional and national medical societies and served two terms as president of the Colorado Society of Internal Medicine.  He has been a board member of the American College of Rheumatology’s Education Foundation and was its Vice President in 2001–2002.  Dr. Schiff has received Outstanding Clinical Faculty awards from the University of Colorado School of Medicine, including the Academic Publications Award and the Research Project Award.  He received the University of Colorado Career Achievement Award in 2006.

Paul Emery, MA, MD, FRCP
Dr. Emery is the arc Professor of Rheumatology and Head of the Academic Section of Musculoskeletal Disease, Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Leeds, Clinical Director (Rheumatology) at the Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust in the United Kingdom, and Director, Leeds Biomedical Translational Research Unit.

Dr. Emery is currently President-Elect of the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR).  He has served on the editorial boards of several journals and is a recipient of the Roche Biennial Award of Clinical Rheumatology, the Rheumatology Hospital Doctor of the Year Award 1999, and, in 2002, for the EULAR Prize for outstanding contribution to rheumatology research.  

Professor Emery’s research interests center around the immunopathogenesis and immunotherapy of rheumatoid arthritis and connective tissue diseases.  He has a special interest in the factors leading to persistent inflammation and is a founding member of Early Rheumatoid Arthritis Study (ERAS), the Leeds Early Arthritis Project (LEAP), the Yorkshire Early Arthritis Register (YEAR), and the Leeds Musculoskeletal Imaging Group.  He has published 600 peer-reviewed articles in this area.

Kenneth G. Saag, MD, MSc
Dr. Saag is Professor of Medicine, Division of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Medicine, and Professor of Epidemiology at the UAB School of Public Health.  He has been Director of the UAB Deep South Musculoskeletal Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics since its inception in 2000 and is Associate Director of the UAB Multipurpose Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Disease Center, funded by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. Dr. Saag is a rheumatologist and outcomes researcher with expertise in the pharmacoepidemiology of musculoskeletal disorders and a clinical focus in bone health. He is the only rheumatologist on the Board of Directors of National Osteoporosis Foundation.  He is experienced in population-based investigations, working with large databases, and quality indicator development.  Dr. Saag is on the US Food and Drug Administration’s Arthritis Advisory Committee and recently co-chaired the American Medical Association Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement on Osteoporosis.  He is on the editorial boards of Archives of Internal Medicine, Arthritis Care and Research, and Arthritis Research and Therapy.  Dr. Saag has chaired the Arthritis Foundation’s Clinical, Therapeutics, and Outcomes Study Section and has served on several study sections of the National Institutes of Health, committees of the Institute of Medicine, national committees to develop arthritis and osteoporosis guidelines, the Musculoskeletal Workgroup of the Cochrane Collaboration, and the workgroup on Arthritis Quality Indicators of the National Commission on Quality Assurance.

Theodore Pincus, MD
Dr. Pincus is Clinical Professor of Medicine at New York University School of Medicine, and Director of Outcomes Research in the Division of Rheumatology at the NYU Hospital for Joint Diseases. He received his MD degree in 1966 from Harvard Medical School, and completed residencies in internal medicine at Stanford University and Cornell-New York Hospital, as well as a fellowship in internal medicine at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Dr. Pincus is board-certified in internal medicine and rheumatology, and was Professor of Medicine and Microbiology at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center from 1980 to 2007.

A Fellow of the American College of Rheumatology and the American College of Physicians, Dr. Pincus is also a member of the American Society of Microbiology.

Dr. Pincus has presented nationally and internationally at medical symposia and has published numerous book chapters, abstracts, and articles in such journals as JAMA, Arthritis and Rheumatism, Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine, New England Journal of Medicine and Journal of Rheumatology. His research focuses on the development of better methods to assess and monitor the care of people with chronic diseases, the reduction of disparities in health according to socioeconomic status, the improvement of long-term outcomes through new drugs and improved use of available treatments, and the further description of a biopsychosocial model in chronic diseases.