Andrew Cope

Consultant rheumatologist

Biography

Andrew Cope is currently Head of the Centre for Rheumatic Diseases and Associate Director of the King’s Clinical Trials Unit at King’s College London. He holds the Versus Arthritis Chair in Rheumatology and also works as an honorary consultant rheumatologist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

In 2008, Andrew was recruited to the Arthritis Research UK Chair in Rheumatology at King’s College London.

Education and training

He graduated in medicine from the University of London with first class honours. After training in general internal medicine at Northwick Park Hospital, The National Hospital for Nervous Diseases and the Royal Brompton Hospital, he trained in rheumatology with Professor Sir Ravinder Maini. He completed his doctoral research studies with Professor Sir Marc Feldmann at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology. He was awarded a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellowship in 1994 to study mechanisms of autoimmune rheumatic diseases at Stanford University, California, USA.

Research interests

  • Disease focus: autoimmune disease with a focus on the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis
  • Laboratory focus: pathways of T cell activation and differentiation; investigating how genetic mutations in immunologically important genes contributes to susceptibility to inflammatory disease (functional genomics)
  • Immunity and metabolism
  • Clinical trials – including RA prevention studies
  • Understanding low disease activity states and immune tolerance.

Awards

  • Rector’s Award for Academic Excellence (Imperial College London), 2005
  • Michael Mason Prize (citation: awarded by the British Society for Rheumatology for excellence in clinical or scientific research in the field of rheumatology), 2002
  • Arthritis National Research Foundation Award (USA), 2002
  • Young Investigator Award, European Workshop for Rheumatology Research, 2002
  • Trust Senior Fellowship in Clinical Science, 1999
  • Young Investigator Award, Hellenic Society for Rheumatology (European League Against Rheumatism), 1998
  • Travel Fellowship awarded by the EULAR/ACR Academic Exchange Programme, 1998
  • National Institutes of Health Travel Fellowship (USA), 1998
  • Arthritis Research UK Programme Grant, 2014

  • Affiliate member of the Immunology Interest Group, Francis Crick Institute.

Last updated: February 2023

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