Pioneering immune system researcher wins top lifetime achievement award

Professor Marc Feldmann wins award at European Inventor of the Year ceremony - News Release

Imperial College London News Release

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Wednesday 18 April 2007

The academic who developed a treatment for autoimmune diseases that has helped millions of patients around the world tonight receives a prestigious lifetime achievement award at this year's European Inventor of the Year awards.

Professor Marc Feldmann , from Imperial College London, receives the honour for his work identifying why autoimmune diseases such as arthritis cause the immune system to fight itself, which began in the 1980s. Together with Imperial colleague Professor Sir Ravinder Maini , he discovered that the key lay in molecules responsible for cell communication, known as cytokines.

Cytokines are normally released by diseased cells for the purpose of alerting the immune system to initiate a counter-response. Professor Feldmann discovered that in autoimmune diseases, highly increased cytokine counts also exist around otherwise healthy cells. This explained the body's aggressive reaction in areas of arthritic inflammation around patients' joints.

In 1991, Professor Feldmann and his colleagues found that all the different cytokines could be stopped by blocking one kind, Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF)a. In 1992, the first series of successful trials were run with rheumatoid arthritis patients at the Kennedy Institute. The improvements in patients' health were so dramatic that the nurses could identify by mere sight which patients had been given a placebo and which had received TNFa blockers.

Since the method was patented in 1995, TNFa inhibitors have become the therapy of choice for stopping the inflammatory and tissue-destructive pathways of rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases.

Professor Feldmann, from the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at Imperial College London, said of winning the award: "It is a wonderful feeling to have one's lifetime work and original inventions acknowledged in such a major way, only the second time this award has been given.

"The work on which this award was based was generously funded over a very long term by the Arthritis Research Campaign. Many people have also made major contributions to these inventions, especially Sir Ravinder Maini. Prof Fionula Brennan and Richard Williams performed many of the key experiments, and Dr James Woody enabled the first clinical trial of TNF blockade to occur," he added.

In 2003, Professors Feldmann and Maini were awarded the prestigious Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research for their work. The Lasker Awards have come to be known as 'America's Nobels' and 66 recipients of the Lasker award have gone on to receive Nobel prizes.

The European Inventor of the Year awards will be presented at a gala event in Munich on 18 April 2007. This is the second time that outstanding inventors will be honoured with the award, which is instituted by the EU Commission and European Patent Office (EPO).

The awards recognise innovators and innovations that have made a significant and lasting contribution to technical development in Europe and beyond, and thus strengthened Europe's economic position. The finalists were selected by an independent high-profile international jury.

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Notes to editors:

1. European Inventor of the Year: the background

The European Inventor of the Year awards have been presented jointly by the European Patent Office and the EU Commission since 2006. They are intended to reward inventors and innovations whose contribution to technical progress in Europe and beyond has been significant and lasting and has thus also helped strengthen Europe's economy. Teams and individuals are eligible in four categories: industry, small and medium-sized enterprises, non-European countries and lifetime achievement. The prize is purely symbolic and does not involve any pecuniary or other recompense. By virtue of their geographical scope and the nature of the selection process, the European Inventor of the Year awards are unique in Europe. The jury selects the finalists, and then the winners, from a list submitted by the EPO's 3 500 patent examiners. The nine independent members of the jury are internationally acknowledged experts from research organisations and industry.

Further information about the European Inventor of the Year 2007 awards can be found at: www.european-inventor.org

2. About Imperial College London

Rated as the world’s ninth best university in the 2006 Times Higher Education Supplement University Rankings, Imperial College London is a science-based institution with a reputation for excellence in teaching and research that attracts 11,500 students and 6,000 staff of the highest international quality.

Innovative research at the College explores the interface between science, medicine, engineering and management and delivers practical solutions that improve quality of life and the environment - underpinned by a dynamic enterprise culture.

With 62 Fellows of the Royal Society among our current academic staff and distinguished past members of the College including 14 Nobel Laureates and two Fields Medallists, Imperial's contribution to society has been immense. Inventions and innovations include the discovery of penicillin, the development of holography and the foundations of fibre optics. This commitment to the application of our research for the benefit of all continues today with current focuses including interdisciplinary collaborations to tackle climate change and mathematical modelling to predict and control the spread of infectious diseases.

The College's 100 years of living science will be celebrated throughout 2007 with a range of events to mark the Centenary of the signing of Imperial's founding charter on 8 July 1907.

Website: www.imperial.ac.uk