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Staff Profile

Dr Arthur Pratt

Clinical Senior Lecturer, Honorary Consulatant Rheumatologist

  • Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 5462
  • Address: Translational and Clinical Research
    Floor 3, William Leech Building,
    The Medical School,
    Framlington Place, Newcastle,
    NE2 4HH
Background

Dr. Arthur G Pratt

BSc, MBChB, PhD, FRCP.

Arthur completed his medical training at Leeds in 2001, with a first class intercalated BSc degree in Molecular Medicine. In 2005 he moved to Newcastle where he went on to undertake a Research Training Fellowship funded by Arthritis Research UK (now Versus Arthritis). During his doctoral studies he established the Northeast Early Arthritis Cohort, which has formed an important basis of his research investigating the pathobiology of immune-mediated inflammatory arthritis as a route to improving patient care. He was appointed Clinical Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University in 2017. His time is divided between NHS work as an Honorary Consultant Rheumatologist, clinical trial work as Principle Investigator for early phase and experimental studies Newcastle's NIHR Clinical Research Facility, and Group Leader in translational research within the Translational and Clinical Research Institute. He co-leads the Musculoskeletal and Inflammation Medicine Theme of the NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre for Ageing and Long Term Conditions, for which he also serves as Academic Career Development Lead.

Research

I am interested in how improving our understanding of the pathogenesis of early immune-mediated inflammatory arthritis might improve our ability to diagnose and treat people with these diseases to optimise outcomes. The way in which these conditions are currently classified for diagnosis does not always serve patients well, and my research seeks to identify readily measurable cellular and molecular biomarkers that help improve our ability to choose the most effective treatment for the right patient - at the right time. The goal of this approach is to offer people interventions that promptly induce long-lasting disease remission whilst keeping drugs to a minimum; ultimately, it is even to delay or prevent disease from becoming established in the first place.

To help achieve these goals we work collaboratively with colleagues locally, across the UK and abroad; in particular, our early arthritis inception cohort has provided a rich resource for observational studies, enhanced by a synovial tissue biopsy programme that enhances our ability to study and contrast pathobiology between inflammatory arthritis from people with different diagnoses.

Molecular studies have emphasised an orchestrating role for CD4 and B lymphocytes in the early development of rheumatoid arthritis (RA): for example, our expression and methylation quantitative trait locus (QTL) analyses refined the candidate causal gene landscape of this condition, helping to prioritise potential future therapeutic targets. The transcriptome of these cells also points to the importance of interleukin-6 mediated STAT3 signalling as an early event in a diagnostically challenging RA sub-group of patients who lack circulating autoantibodies; we have validated this finding and continue to investigate its potential implications for the clinic, alongside other biomarkers that might serve to predict the effectiveness of first-line anti-rheumatic drugs in newly diagnosed patients. Such investigations inform my work as a clinical trial Investigator, where I have a particular interest in studies of interventions to "intercept" (delay or prevent) RA onset. Finally, my group is increasingly interested in delineating mechanisms of immune dysregulation that are shared between different diseases, and opportunities they may afford to re-purpose drugs for inflammatory arthritis in other conditions and vice versa. This work has sparked collaboration with colleagues in other specialties including oncology, where the occurrence of immune-related adverse events amongst patients who receive a new class of anti-cancer drugs affords new opportunities to investigate mechanisms of immune dysregulation.

Teaching

As well as supervising trainee rheumatologists and contributing to medical student teaching, I supervise undergraduate and Masters student laboratory projects and lecture on Newcastle University's Applied Immunobiology undergraduate course. I am the primary or co-supervisor for several PhD students and serve as the Academic Career Development Lead for the NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre.

Publications