George Kollias (biologist)

George Kollias
Born	1958 Greece
Known for	Tumor necrosis factor-alpha
Scientific career
Fields	Biologist
Institutions	Alexander Fleming BSRC

George Kollias, PhD, was the President and Scientific Director of Alexander Fleming BSRC from 2002-2010. He obtained his BSc and his PhD from the University of Athens, Greece and he has done postdoctoral research at the National Institute for Medical Research in London UK (1985–1987). He was also the Head of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at the Hellenic Pasteur Institute in Athens, Greece, (1989–2000) and the Director of Institute for Immunology at of Alexander Fleming BSRC (2000–2002). He is currently Acting Director of the Institute of Immunology at of Alexander Fleming BSRC. Dr Kollias is an EMBO member . He has a long record in the generation and characterization of animal models of human diseases. Dr. George Kollias is a distinguished scientist with an H-index over 53 (ISI web of knowledge ). Furthermore is placed amongst the top cited European scientists in Rheumatology research for the period 1997-2008.

Dr. George Kollias, is a leading scientist in the field of TNF function in pathophysiology, highly reputed for establishing and characterizing disease pathways in animal models of chronic inflammation and autoimmunity (e.g. Rheumatoid Arthritis, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, endotoxic shock and systemic lupus). His group was first to provide in vivo, proof of principle studies, on deregulated TNF production being causal to the development of chronic polyarthritis in a transgenic animal model, and for showing originally that anti-TNF antibody treatment was efficacious in treating the modelled disease ). These studies were instrumental in mobilizing the interest of anti-TNF industry in rheumatoid arthritis and foreshadowed the success of the first clinical trials performed. Recent studies on the expression signature of the arthritogenic synovial fibroblast led to the identification and functional validation in relevant animal models of cytoskeletal rearrangements as a novel pathophysiological determinant in inflammatory joint disease. These studies have created a unique list of disease modifiers of potential therapeutic value. Dr. Kollias research is supported by several competitive grants from the European Commission and National sources, as well as by the international biopharmaceutical industry. Dr. Kollias was appointed Coordinator of a consortium of 24 European organizations constituting a Network of Excellence on ‘Functional Genomics in mutant mouse models as tools to investigate the complexity of human immunological disease’ [6th Framework Program (2005-2009) – 11M€] . Dr. Kollias serves as an advisor for scientific organizations and consults for industry . He is also a reviewer for high-impact scientific Journals and evaluator for European Commission , National and International project and was recently elected and currently serves as President of the Council of the Directors of the Greek Research Centers (2009-2010).He is currently the National Representative of Greece for the ESFRI (European Research Forum on Research Infrastructures) and member of the ESFRI working group for Biomedical Sciences (ESFRI-BMS). He is also a core member of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) project BeTheCure (Total budget: 38 Mi€, 2011-2016) .

External links

• BSRC "Alexander Fleming"
• MUGEN Network of Excellence