Synexus Scientific Advisory Boards

In selecting our scientific advisory boards Synexus have focused on 6 major therapeutic areas which represent the clinical trial sectors where Synexus can bring value to clients and patients. This reflects the growing levels of clinical research being channelled into these chronic diseases, disease prevention and the impact on patient health and wellbeing.

Respiratory Medicine

Diabetes

Metabolic Disease

Cardiovascular Disease

Infectious Disease and Vaccines

Memory Impairment and CNS 

Our key opinion leaders and members of the scientific advisory boards are here to ensure that Synexus clinical staff are fully trained on up to date medical and nursing procedures and guidelines and provide educational training and support for the clinical teams. This includes specific training days relating to key clinical studies being performed by Synexus.

They also provide guidance for our patient focused education initiatives which includes patient information literature, patient meetings and contributions to our patient websites the most recent is our patient asthma website.

The importance of understanding the implications of clinical trials in the current clinical environment allows Synexus to establish early in the review process whether a clinical protocol is suitable to be conducted at our dedicated research centres. We have excellent input from our KoLs in terms of the protocol design and any challenges we may encounter in the recruitment of patients or conduct of the study. This ensures we will only undertake clinical trials we are confident we can deliver for our patients and clients.

Respiratory Advisory Board
Chaired by Professor Clive Page

Professor Clive Page is the Director of the Sackler Institute of Pulmonary Pharmacology and Joint Head of the Institute of Pharmaceutical Science at King's College London. He has over 25 years of experience in clinical research and drug development.

Having completed his studies in London, he took up a position with Sandoz in Basle, Switzerland, where he was responsible for managing a research group in the discovery and development of novel drugs for asthma and allergic diseases. He subsequently returned to academia at King's College in London where he continued his research interests in drug development.

His research interests include developing novel drugs for the treatment of inflammatory airway diseases, developing novel antibiotics for a range of infections including clearance of MSRA, the role of platelets in non-thrombotic processes, particularly airway obstruction, inflammatory cell recruitment and interaction in inflammatory responses, particularly the role platelet/leukocyte interactions play in both allergic and non-allergic inflammatory responses. The pharmacology of Theophylline and selective phosphodiesterase inhibitors as treatments for inflammatory diseases and the role of phosphodiesterase isoenzymes in inflammatory cells in patients with Asthma and COPD.

In 1993 he was appointed the Director of the Sackler Institute of Pulmonary Pharmacology and in 2010 the Joint Head of the Institute of Pharmaceutical Science at King's College London.

Having become the Joint Head of the Institute of Pharmaceutical Science, Professor Page is now involved in establishing a Drug Discovery Unit to help with the identification of molecules and potential development of new drugs.He is also responsible for the management of the institute research and undergraduate and postgraduate teaching across all aspects of Pharmaceutical Science, including internally with appropriate Regulatory Bodies and the Biotech/Pharma Industry.

His research has resulted in more than 200 papers published by peer reviewed journals and he has contributed to over 30 books, ranging from Proceedings of International Meetings to chapters in Textbooks of Pharmacology and Respiratory Medicine. He is Editor in Chief of Pulmonary Pharmacology and Therapeutics and was the Executive Editor of the British Journal of Pharmacology until 2007.

Professor Page is involved with several companies as a member of their scientific advisory boards.

Cardiac Advisory Board
Chaired by Professor John Kastelein

John J.P. Kastelein (1954) is Professor of Medicine at the Department of Vascular Medicine at the Academic Medical Center (AMC) of the University of Amsterdam, where he holds the Strategic Chair of Genetics of Cardiovascular Disease.

He received his medical degree in Amsterdam in 1980 where he subsequently received specialty training in internal medicine. Then, between 1986 and 1988, he was trained in medical genetics, lipidology and molecular biology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver under the guidance of Prof. Dr. M.R. Hayden.

In 1989 he founded the Lipid Research Clinic at the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam, which is currently serving as a tertiary referral centre for over 5000 patients each year and has become part of the department of Vascular Medicine.

In 1995, Dr. Kastelein set up a foundation for the active identification of patients with classical familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) in the Netherlands (StoeH), for which he currently holds a position in the board of directors.. Since its inception, the StoeH has found over 22.000 individuals for whom a molecular diagnosis of FH could be made. The subsequent improvement of the treatment of these FH carriers has saved many lives, as published in Lancet in 2001 and very recently in the British Medical Journal in 2008.

Dr. Kastelein was president of the Dutch Atherosclerosis Society (DAS) until 2009 and chairs the National Scientific Committee on Familial Hypercholesterolemia (EHC). He is a member of the Royal Dutch Society for Medicine & Physics, the Council for Basic Science of the American Heart Association and the European Atherosclerosis Society. He is a board member of the International Task Force for CHD Prevention and was recently appointed to the Executive Board of the International Atherosclerosis Society (IAS).

Professor Kastelein's current research interests can be found in the etiology, diagnosis, prevention and treatment of hypertriglyceridaemia, hypercholesterolaemia and low HDL cholesterol, all conditions associated with atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease.

He has published over 630 research papers in peer reviewed journals, including Nature Genetics, Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and Circulation and has a Hirsch index of 62.

Besides the scientific programmes aimed at the etiology of atherogenesis, Dr. Kastelein also serves on a number of executive and steering committees of large intervention studies, including the IDEAL, TNT, CAPTIVATE, ENHANCE, ILLUMINATE, JUPITER, RADIANCE and numerous others of which TNT (2005), RADIANCE 1 (2007), ENHANCE (2008) and JUPITER (2008) are published in the New England Journal of Medicine, IDEAL (2006) in JAMA and RADIANCE 2 (2007) in Lancet.

Diabetes Advisory Board

Chaired by Professor Peter.J.Grant

Peter.J.Grant is Professor of Medicine, Consultant Physician and Head of the Division of Cardiovascular & Diabetes Research, Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Leeds, UK.

He has been Professor of Medicine and Honorary Consultant Physician at Leeds University since December 2000, Research Director for the School of Medicine (October 2000 to March 2004) and Chairman of the School's Research Committee and a member of the Executive Board.

He received his medical degree in the UK in 1976, and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1995 and a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology in 2010. He received specialty training, including a post as a Welcome Research Fellow in the UK and a sabbatical post at the Central Hospital Universitaire Vaudois in Lausanne ,Switzerland.

As Professor of Medicine and Honorary Consultant Physician in the University of Leeds, approximately 30% of his time is spent on clinical activities and most of the remainder on research and administration. His clinical work lies in diabetes with a particular interest in cardiovascular risk. The research component includes the role of Head of the Division of Cardiovascular & Diabetes Research, the laboratories and offices of which are situated in the LIGHT Laboratories. As head of the Division of Cardiovascular and Diabetes Research, he is responsible for a clinical research unit comprised of ~40 clinicians, scientists and support staff. This unit has an international reputation in the field of diabetes and cardiovascular risk.

Professor Grant is currently the co-chairman of the EASD/ESC Task Force to update the Guidelines on diabetes, pre-diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. He is on the scientific committee for the International Society for Diabetes & Vascular Disease and is on the review panel for the EUROGEAR, European Science Foundation as well as being a member of the committee of the Joint British Societies Guidelines on Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease.

He has contributed to numerous national and international committees as well as editorial boards and acts as an examiner for the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Ophthalmologists. He has published over 200 articles in peer review journals with an additional 70 reviews and book chapters.