The REG Board of Directors
Professor Nikolaos (Nikos) Papadopoulos
President
Prof. Papadopoulos is Professor of Allergy and Paediatric Allergy at the University of Manchester, UK, and the Chair of Allergy and Pediatric Allergy at the University of Athens (NKUA), Greece. He has extensive clinical and educational experience in paediatric allergy, having headed for many years a unit caring for more than 7,000 children with allergic diseases yearly, implementing state-of-the-art interventions and training medical students, resident paediatricians and allergists.
His research focus is the interface between infection and allergic disease, with an emphasis on asthma exacerbations and food allergy. He is the Coordinator of the EU-funded CURE project. He has extensive collaborations in the context of EU projects, such as PreDicta, GA2LEN, EUROPREVALL, iFAAM and FAST.
Prof. Papadopoulos has published over 300 papers (h-index: 70), has received several international awards and is invited to speak at international scientific meetings some 30 times a year. Moreover, he has served or is serving on the boards of EAACI, GA2LEN, WAO, EFA and ARIA. He was the 2013–2015 President of EAACI and is currently the President of the Respiratory Effectiveness Group (REG).
Walter G Canonica
Vice President for Global Collaboration
Allergist and Pulmonologist
Giorgio Walter is Professor of Respiratory Medicine at Humanitas University & Director Personalized Medicine Asthma & Allergy Center at Humanitas Research Hospital-Milano Italy Professor Canonica first specialised in pulmonary diseases after receiving his medical degree from the University of Genoa, Italy. He then specialised in allergy and clinical immunology at Florence University, Italy. He subsequently conducted clinical immunology and allergology research at several European Universities and Institutes, in addition to two years at the Medical University of South Carolina, USA. Since returning to the University of Genoa in 1995, Professor Canonica has held a number of academic positions, including Director of the Speciality School of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Director of the Specialty School of Pulmonary Diseases and Chairman of the Department of Medical Specialties (University Hospital San Martino Genoa, Italy). He is a Board Member of ARIA-Allergic Rhinitis and its Impact on Asthma and helped to develop their guidelines.
He has been President of WAO-World Allergy Organization, Interasma-Global Asthma Association, currently VicePresident of REG-Respiratory Effectiveness Group.
He is Steering Committee Member of SANI-Severe Asthma Network Italy.
Professor Sinthia Bosnic-Anticevich
Vice President for Communications
Professor Sinthia Bosnic-Anticevich is an internationally recognised leader in in the field of respiratory medicines. She is the founder and Team Leader of the Quality Use of Respiratory Medicines Group, located at the Woolcock Institute, University of Sydney and Sydney Local Health District. The group focuses on generating new knowledge about the use of respiratory medicines from the patient, health care provider and societal perspective with output of over 120 research publications in the area. The research of Professor Bosnic-Anticevich and her group has changed the landscape of inhaler technique research; impacting on national and international treatment guidelines. Her research has been critical to our understanding of the role of respiratory medication use in the precision medicine approach to respiratory disease management. Professor Bosnic-Anticevich works across the continuum of the health care settings, with a multidimensional and inter-professional approach to better understand and improving health outcomes for patients using respiratory medicines.
She is on the executive of ARIA (Allergic Rhinitis in Asthma) and chair of Pharmacy ARIA, which is the leading global initiative for the management of Allergic Rhinitis in pharmacy. Sinthia Bosnic-Anticevich’s role as Chair of this group is to lead the development of the Pharmacy ARIA guidelines and to work with international experts in the field to develop guidelines for pharmacy that can integrate the practice of pharmacy across the health disciplines. The latest Pharmacy ARIA guidelines are currently under review.
Professor Bosnic-Anticevich is Vice President of the Respiratory Effectiveness Group (REG), an investigator-led, not-for-profit research initiative that has been set up in recognition of the potential value of real-life research and the need to harness real-life evidence to inform meaningful practice guidelines, drug licensing and prescribing decisions. In this capacity she provides international leadership in setting research standards and excellence in real-life research and in evaluating mechanisms for integrating real-life research into clinical guidelines and practice. Currently there are over 300 researchers within the REG network.
Nicolas Roche
Vice President for Methodology
Nicolas Roche is Professor of Respiratory Medicine at Cochin Hospital, University of Paris Descartes, France. His major areas of interest are COPD and asthma with particular focus on inhaled therapy, disease phenotypes, assessment tools, treatment strategies and real-life research.
Professor Roche is a member of the GOLD science committee, President of Société de Pneumologie de Langue Française, co-chair of the 2018 ERS Congress and member of the American Thoracic Society. He is guidelines director of the ERS and member of the ERS Clinical Research Collaboration (CRC) working group and ERS Science Council, vice-president of the Respiratory Effectiveness Group and member of the Asthma Drug Management Improvement Team. He coordinates French guidelines on COPD and is a consultant for French institutions for the development of national projects on COPD.
Professor Roche has authored more than 250 research articles in international peer-reviewed journals and edited or co-edited several books on COPD. He is Associate Editor of the European Respiratory Review and the Clinical Respiratory Journal.
Professor Antonio Anzueto
Vice President for Internal Organisation
Antonio Anzueto is Professor of Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center and Chief of the Pulmonary Section for the South Texas Veterans Health Care System, San Antonio, Texas, USA. In addition, he is a faculty member of the Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care Medicine Division, the Medical Director for the Pulmonary Function Laboratory at the University Hospital in San Antonio, and an adjunct scientist at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, San Antonio, Texas.
His areas of interest include chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic bronchitis, community-acquired pneumonia, sepsis, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and lung transplantation.
He is a member of a number of medical committees, a reviewer for various scientific journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, and has published over 250 manuscripts in highly rated medical journals. He has extensive research experience as has been the principal investigator of numerous large multicenter clinical trials. He is member of several international committees such as the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD); ATS/IDSA Community Acquired Pneumonia Guidelines Committee; International committee – consensus conference on ALI/ARDS. He is also a practicing physician that has been nominated over the last 8 years as a “Best Pulmonary Doctor” in San Antonio, Texas.
Alan Kaplan
Vice President for Events
MD CCFP(EM) FCFP
Family Physician practicing in York Region, Ontario, Canada.
Chairperson of the Family Physician Airways Group of Canada (www.fpagc.com)
Past- Chairperson of the Respiratory Section of the College of Family Physicians of Canada
Senate member of the International Primary Care Respiratory Group
President of the IPCRG 5th biennual world scientific meeting, “Making Every Breath Count” Toronto June 2-5, 2010
Chair of the Council of Organizing Members of the Canadian Network for Respiratory Care.
Member of Past Canadian Consensus Guidelines for H pylori, Asthma, COPD and Sinusitis
Representative of the College of Family Physicians of Canada to the SARS clinical working group.
Member of Chronic Respiratory Disease Surveillance Advisory Committee (Public Health Agency of Canada)
Member of the Health Canada Section on Allergy and Respiratory Therapies
Member of the Canadian Metropolitan Tuberculosis Subcommittee
Co-Chair, Health Quality Ontario COPD Community Management standards committee
Board member, Thrombosis Canada
Vice President, Respiratory Effectiveness Group
International editor for Nature’s Primary Care Respiratory Journal
International editor for the Italian Journal of Primary Care
Non-respiratory medical interests:
Community Pain consultant
Palliative Care community physician
Hospitalist, Brampton Civic Hospital
Social:
Married with four children and four dogs
Ardent baseball player
Omar Usmani
Vice President for Scientific Outputs
MBBS, PhD, FHEA, FRCP
Omar Usmani is a Reader and Consultant Physician in Respiratory Medicine at the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI), Imperial College London and Royal Brompton Hospital. He qualified in Medicine at King’s College London and completed his PhD at Imperial College London for which he received the 2005 NHLI Imperial College PhD Prize for the best thesis.
His clinical research themes are Inhaled Drug Delivery, Airways Physiology, Lung Imaging, Respiratory Pharmacology and Tele-monitoring / E-health. He is Secretary of Assembly 5 (Asthma and COPD) at the ERS, Chair of UKIG (UK Inhaler Group), Vice-Chair of Drug Delivery to the Lungs, and Europe Liaison of International Society of Aerosols in Research (ISAM).
In 2012, he was awarded a UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Career Development Fellowship, the first time this award category was given to Respiratory Science research in the UK. In 2015, received one of the highest accolades in aerosol science, the Thomas T Mercer Award from the American Association of Aerosol Research (AAAR) and ISAM, recognizing his international research excellence in pharmaceutical aerosols and inhalable materials.
He is currently clinical lead on an EU Horizon 2020 consortium project ‘myaircoach’ focusing on the tele-monitoring of patients with asthma and is PI of an FDA awarded project on understanding patient perceptions in breathing from a DPI.
Dermot Ryan
Vice President for Finances and Supporter Relationships
Dermot Ryan is a recently retired GP who has had a long-term interest in Respiratory and Allergic diseases with regard to primary care. He was previously chair of Primary Care Society during which time he was instrumental in establishing the professorial post of Professor in Primary Care Respiratory Medicine, the first ever clinical discipline to be established in any academic department of primary care. During this time, he was involved in the set-up of what is now npj Primary Care Respiratory Medicine. The purpose of these two activities were to research real life solutions to the real-life problems encountered in daily practice and provide a vehicle for the dissemination of this research. He was previously the Clinical Respiratory lead of East Midland Strategic Health Authority. He was the first chair of the primary care interest group of EAACI where he served (and is still serving) on many task forces. He succeeded David Price as president of REG and in turn was succeeded by Nikos Papadopoulos. He is Honorary Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh.
