Professor David D'Cruz  

Professor D'Cruz is the Clinical Team Leader of this internationally renowned tertiary referral centre for autoimmune rheumatic disorders. His major clinical and research interests are systemic lupus erythematosus, the antiphospholipid syndrome and systemic vasculitis. He leads the Louise Coote Lupus Clinical Trials Unit which has a portfolio of investigator and industry led trials. His research portfolio includes a translational medicine programme in collaboration with basic science laboratories in the Division of Immunology, Inflammation and Infectious Diseases, Kings College School of Medicine.

He trained at St Mary's Hospital Medical School in London. Senior House Officer and Registrar rotations at University College and the Royal London Hospitals were followed by a clinical registrar post and then an arc Clinical Research Fellowship at St Thomas' Hospital. He was appointed Senior Lecturer in Rheumatology at St Bartholomew's and The Royal London Hospitals following a Senior Registrar post in General Internal Medicine and Rheumatology. Professor D'Cruz has published 165 peer reviewed papers, 66 editorials and reviews and 25 book chapters. He is one of the Managing Editors of the journal Lupus and was Editor in Chief of the Journal of Autoimmune Diseases 2004-9. He was President of the Rheumatology Section of the Royal Society of Medicine 2008-9.

  Professor Ranjeny Thomas  

Professor Ranjeny Thomas is clinical Rheumatologist at Princess Alexandra Hospital and head of the Autoimmunity programme at the University of Queensland Diamantina Institute. She did a research fellowship with Peter Lipsky in Dallas, Texas and has been a full Professor at UQ since 2003.

Her research is focussed on the study of autoimmune disease and restoration of tolerance. Through this work, she developed and tested the first rheumatoid arthritis vaccine. She has also contributed major insights into the pathogenesis of spondyloarthropathies and autoimmune diabetes, leading to the development of disease biomarkers and therapeutic strategies.

Ranjeny is founder and a director of the spin-off company, Dendright, which is developing vaccines to suppress autoimmune diseases. 
 

  Professor David Hunter  

Professor Hunter is a rheumatology clinician researcher whose main research focus has been clinical and translational research in osteoarthritis (OA). He is the Florance and Cope Chair of Rheumatology and Professor of Medicine at University of Sydney, and Staff Specialist at Royal North Shore Hospital and North Sydney Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Centre.

A native of New Zealand and an Australian citizen, he earned his Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery, and Master of Sports Medicine at the University of New South Wales. He completed a fellowship in Rheumatology at the Royal Australian College of Physicians, a Masters of Sports Medicine from UNSW, and earned a Masters of Medical Science (Clinical Epidemiology) from the University of Newcastle. He established a full-time career in medical research in 1999, received his PhD in 2001 and then maintained an academic faculty appointment in Boston University amongst the foremost OA clinical researchers. He returned to Australia in 2010.

His research is focused on a number of key elements in OA including (but not limited to) the epidemiology of osteoarthritis, the application of imaging to better understand structure and function with application to both epidemiologic research and clinical trials, novel therapies in disease management and heath service system delivery of chronic disease management. He is an editor for leading international journals in his field. He has authored books on osteoarthritis and has over 300 publications in peer reviewed journals.

  Associate Professor Anita Nolan  

Anita qualified as a doctor and later as a dentist before undertaking specialist training in Oral Medicine at the Eastman Dental Institute in London. Her research projects are the genetic and prognostic significance of oral lesions in Crohn's Disease, salivary gland disease and the possible role of Vitamin D in the prevention of dental decay in young children.

Oral Medicine is a specialty involving the medical investigation and management of orofacial disease. Clinics are varied and include the care of patients with orofacial conditions such as oral cancer, orofacial pain, salivary disorders and oral mucosal diseases. 
  
Topic:     Sjogren's syndrome - oral manifestations and their management 
  
Abstract: 
Loss of saliva can be detrimental to oral health and the clinical effects can be far-reaching. These effects include rampant dental caries, mucosal infections and salivary gland disease. Not surprisingly, salivary hypofunction has been shown to have a negative impact upon quality of life. Sjogrens' syndrome can cause severe and persistent dry mouth and eyes. It is estimated that there may be 80,000 people suffering from Sjogrens' syndrome in New Zealand. The lack of saliva in these patients not causes dental problems but can impact on general and psychological health. This talk will discuss the oral and dental impact of Sjogren's syndrome, the management of these conditions and explore patients' daily experiences of living with Sjogren's syndrome.

  Dr Rebecca Roberts  

Rebecca is a senior research fellow working in the Department of Surgical Sciences (Dunedin School of Medicine). She graduated with a PhD in human genetics in 2001. Since then she has worked in a number of research and diagnostic laboratories. Rebecca has a long-standing interest in the genetics of inflammatory diseases and the genetic variation that impacts on drug treatments used to manage these diseases.

She has published over 70 research articles and is currently one of three principal investigators on a Health Research Council programme grant investigating the application of genomic technology to identified shared inflammatory pathways in chronic disease. In addition to her research, Rebecca is also studying full-time for her medical degree here at Otago.

  Professor Lisa Stamp  

Professor Lisa Stamp researches and teaches at the University of Otago's Christchurch campus and is a consultant rheumatologist at Christchurch Hospital. She is director of the Canterbury Rheumatology Immunology Research Group and the University of Otago Arthritis Research Theme.

After completing undergraduate medical studies at Otago, Associate Professor Stamp undertook advanced training in Rheumatology in Christchurch, Auckland and Adelaide. She subsequently completed her PhD at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

She has published almost 60 papers in high-impact journals, received major awards in her field and has attracted significant grants from the Health Research Council and other funding bodies.

Associate Professor Stamp's research interests include how best to tailor drug treatments for rheumatic conditions such as gout and rheumatoid arthritis for individual patients and determining the role of the immune system messenger interleukin-17 and other pro-inflammatory mediators in these diseases.

  Professor Fiona McQueen  

Professor Fiona McQueen is a consultant rheumatologist working within the Auckland District Health Board and has a joint appointment with the University of Auckland as Professor of Rheumatology. Her primary research focus for the last 20 years has been imaging in inflammatory arthritis. She has published extensively in this field, both as a founding member of the OMERACT MRI Imaging group and as Head of the Auckland Rheumatology Imaging Group.

  Dr Ravi Suppiah  

Ravi Suppiah is an Auckland trained, and Auckland based Rheumatologist. Ravi did 2 years of his fellowship training at the Nuffield Orthopaedic centre in Oxford and the University of Oxford prior to returning to NZ at the end of 2010. The main academic focus of his fellowship was vasculitis clinical research with Professor Raashid Luqmani. Ravi has published peer reviewed papers and book chapters in this area. He remains involved with database projects and clinical trials with the European Vasculitis Society (EUVAS) and is on the steering committee of the DCVAS project to develop new diagnostic and classification criteria for systemic vasculitis. 
Ravi's current roles are as consultant rheumatologist for Auckland DHB, Counties Manukau DHB and Auckland Rheumatology and Sports Medicine Ltd (his private practice). He is involved in supervising the registrar education and professional development programme for the rheumatology trainees in the Auckland region.

Conditions of Submission

1. Abstracts are required for all paper presentations and Friday afternoon's Grand Rounds session.
2. The "Title of Paper" should be brief, but explicit.
3. For "Affiliation", street address, postcode, state and/or country are not required unless outside Australia and New Zealand, when only the city and country are required.
4. The abstract should be arranged as follows:
   * Purpose       * Methods       * Results       * Conclusions
5. Excluding title, authors and institution, the abstract should be approximately 250 words. Any references (maximum of two) must be included in this allowance.
6. Abbreviations should be used only for common terms. For uncommon terms, the abbreviation should be given in brackets after the first full use of the word.
7. All free paper (oral) presentations will be of 15 minutes duration (10 minutes presentation, with 5 minutes discussion).

The CLOSING DATE for receipt of Abstracts was Monday 16 June 2014. Late submissions will still be considered but will be marked at "Reserve" and generally accommodated into the programme if there is space or a vacancy is created.

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