George Kollias is a Greek biologist, Member of the and Professor of Physiology at the of the University of Athens. He is renowned for providing the preclinical rationale for the development of anti-TNF therapies for rheumatoid arthritis. is highly cited for discovering disease pathways in animal models of chronic inflammation and autoimmunity. He is credited with the development of major national infrastructures of scientific and technological excellence in Greece.
Education and employment
George Kollias graduated from the Biology Department of the , Greece and performed doctoral studies in Molecular Biology from 1980 to 1984 at the . He continued with postdoctoral research in the field of gene structure and expression at the Laboratory of Gene Structure and Expression, , London, UK, and from 1990-2000 he established the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at the in Athens, Greece. From 2000-2002, he was appointed Director of the Institute for Immunology at the , and has served as the Center's President and Scientific Director. Since May 2012, he is Professor of Experimental Physiology at the Medical School of the University of Athens.
Research and innovation
In 1991, George Kollias' 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-huTNF antibody treatment was efficacious in treating the modeled disease. These studies were instrumental in mobilizing the interest of anti-TNF industry and foreshadowed the success of the first clinical trials performed in RA in 1994. Further work in his lab provided insights into the function of TNF in host defense and the structure and function of secondary lymphoid organs, a work that more recently evolved into the establishment of TNFRI and NFkB signals specifically in follicular dendritic cells being of pivotal significance in the regulation of humoral B cell responses and autoimmunity. Moreover, George Kollias' group demonstrated TNF’s causal effect in the development of combined Crohn's disease and polyarthritis, and the contribution of transmembrane versus soluble TNF in the pathogenic processes. These studies offered a better understanding of the physiological function of TNF in health and disease and rationalized potential complications or optimizations of anti-TNF therapies in other diseases such as in MS. More recently, George Kollias introduced a novel pathogenic principle to explain the cellular basis of TNF function in gut/joint axis diseases, including spondyloarthropathies, by showing that mesenchymal cells, namely synovial fibroblasts and intestinal subepithelial myofibroblasts, are common pathogenic targets of TNF sufficient to drive the chronic inflammatory and destructive disease process. Animal models developed in his lab have been distributed to numerous academic and industrial laboratories around the world. In 2005 he founded the first CRO-biotech spin-off of BSRC Fleming, Biomedcode Hellas SA.
Distinctions
George Kollias is placed amongst the top cited European scientists in Rheumatology research for the period 1997-2008. He has published over 170 primary research articles in peer-reviewed journals and more than 40 reviews and commentaries. His work has received over 29.000 citations and an h-index of 76. His laboratory is supported by several competitive grants from European Commission and National sources, as well as by the international biopharmaceutical industry. From 2005 - 2009 Dr. Kollias coordinated a consortium of 24 EU organizations constituting the FP6 Network of Excellence . He is currently a core member of the Innovative Medicines Initiative project and has recently been awarded a 2013 to study the role of mesenchymal cells in intestinal tissue homeostasis and pathophysiology. George Kollias is an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization since 2000 and Member of the Biosciences Steering Group of the European Academies Science Advisory Panel since 2014. In recognition of eminent scientific discoveries and contributions to science, he was awarded the internationally acclaimed for Rheumatology in 2014 and the first , of Prix Galien Greece in 2015. Dr. Kollias served as the National Representative of Greece for the and as member of the ESFRI strategic working group on Health and Food. George Kollias has been a member of the National Council on Research and Technology of the Ministry of Development and has served as an elected President of the Council of the Directors of the Greek Research Centers. He serves as an advisor for scientific organizations and consults for industry. George Kollias also serves as invited speaker, chairman and member of the Organising and Scientific Committees of several scientific meetings throughout the world. George Kollias is Director of the Graduate Program in at the Medical School of the University of Athens.
