Professor John Isaacs is a Consultant Rheumatologist at the Freeman Hospital, Professor of Clinical Rheumatology at Newcastle University and Associate Medical Director for Research at Newcastle Hospitals.
Professor John Isaacs trained in medicine at London University and subsequently read for his PhD in immunology at Cambridge University. His postgraduate medical training included posts at the Hammersmith Hospital in London, Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.
He originally started to train in nephrology, switching to rheumatology after his PhD. Prior to moving to Newcastle in 2002 he was Professor of Experimental Rheumatology at Leeds Teaching Hospitals and the University of Leeds, having taken up his first consultant post there in 1995, as senior lecturer in rheumatology.
At Newcastle University he is Professor of Clinical Rheumatology and Director of Therapeutics North East. He is also Associate Medical Director for Research at Newcastle Hospitals and leads Research for Newcastle Health Innovation Partners.
In 2019 Professor Isaacs became a National Institute for Health Research Senior Investigator, and is past Chair of the Scientific Committee of the European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (2019-20).
From 2007 to 2017 Professor Isaacs chaired Arthritis Research UK’s Clinical Study Group for Adult Inflammatory Arthritis, developing a competitive research agenda for the UK.
Special interests
Rheumatoid arthritis, with a particular interest in refractory inflammatory arthritis and difficult to treat inflammation.
Research
Over the past 25 years, Professor Isaacs’ work has focused on the potential of novel immune therapies to treat rheumatoid arthritis (RA), ranging from laboratory research identifying possible drug targets to early- and late-stage clinical trials.
His research group is mainly focussed on the question ‘Is it possible to switch off rheumatoid arthritis, or prevent its development?’ and his team is pioneering tolerogenic dendritic cell therapy, a particular type of cellular treatment, for inflammatory arthritis patients.
He also has a longstanding interest in precision therapeutics for rheumatic disease, attempting to develop tests to identify the optimal treatment for each patient, and led the Medical Research Council/Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries (MRC/ABPI) RA-MAP consortium.
Professor Isaacs has published almost 300 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals and his work has been cited more than 22,000 times.
