UNIVERSITY OF PARIS DESCARTES
  Organisation DescriptionThe University of Paris Descartes (UPD) is one of the main Paris (France) Universities with 37,000 students and a strong focus on Medical Sciences, Mathematics, Law and Sports. It is structured into 10 faculties with 2,200 teachers, 1,300 researchers, 109 Master degrees, and about 70 laboratories affiliated to INSERM or CNRS. The annual budget is € 333 million (not taking into account salaries). Cochin Hospital is one of the main hospitals affiliated to UPD (1,100 beds, 700 physicians). The Department of Rheumatology A is a member of “Pôle Osteo-Articulaire” with 40 beds and 7 full-time physicians. The head of the department is Prof. André Kahan. The department is taking care of about 300 patients with SSc and has developed many projects in the field of inflammatory rheumatic diseases. The department has published more than 150 original articles about SSc, the main topics are cardiovascular involvement of the disease and genetics. The basic science work is performed within the Cochin Research Institute at the Unit for Chronic Inflammation and Autoimmunity. Website: http://immunogenetic.cochin.free.fr Professors Allanore and Kahan and their team run one of the largest rheumatology hospital departments in France taking care of all kinds of diseases from the rheumatology and clinical immunology field and have a longstanding (>20 years) experience in managing patients with rheumatic diseases, and specifically with SSc. The team has been amongst the founding centers in the pan-European EUSTAR initiative. At present, Prof. Allanore is acting member of the board of the EUSTAR consortium after having taking care of the clinical research committee for 4 years. He is also the head of the scientific board of the French patient association (Association des Sclérodermies de France). TeamProf. Yannick Allanore has been nominated full Professor of Rheumatology at Paris Descartes University since September 2008. He is a member of EUSTAR since its creation in 2004, acting as the head of the clinical research committee from 2007 to 2009 and then joining the board of the group. He is an affiliated member of the American Scleroderma Clinical Trial Consortium (SCTC) since 2008 and is listed among the experts in the SSc field by both research (SCTC, EUSTAR) and patient associations. Professor Allanore is the head of the scientific committee of the Association des Sclérodermies de France. He is also heading a basic science research group at the Cochin Institute and has mainly devoted his research activities (190 publications in peer-reviewed journals) to different aspects of SSc including cardiovascular risk, pathophysiology, genetic bases, clinical and therapeutic aspects. As far as the specific WP is concerned, he has published several papers in peer-reviewed journals concerning both SSc-associated pulmonary hypertension, including the identification of predictive factors, and observational therapeutic studies.
Prof. André Kahan, Professor of Rheumatology, is the head of the Dpt. of Rheumatology A at Cochin Hospital, Paris. He has performed several research projects on cardiac involvement in SSc developing new methods for assessement and demonstrating the pharmacological effects of CCBs. Dr. Jérome Avouac, Assistant Professor and Dr. Julien Wipff, Associate Professor, have long-standing experience in the assessment and follow-up of patients with systemic sclerosis, and they both performed a PhD thesis on SSc, on angiogenesis/vasculogenesis and genetics respectively. Dr. Christophe Meune: Cardiologist, expériences in Sc-PAH and clinical research. |