Patricia Woo
Professor Patricia Woo CBE FMedSci is Emeritus Professor of Paediatric Rheumatology at University College London. Her qualifications include MBBS at Charing Cross Hospital, London University, PhD at Cambridge University. After postdoctoral studies at Childrens’ Hospital, Harvard, Boston,USA, she was appointed in 1985 as group head at the MRC Clinical Research Centre. She became Professor of Paediatric Rheumatology within London University in 1994.
She founded the tertiary referral service for children at London’s Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, and the adolescent and young adult referral service at University College Hospital in 1995. Her Dept. research included clinical and basic research on childhood arthritis, dermatomyositis, systemic lupus erythematosus, autoinflammatoy syndromes and vasculitis. Some of the research work has been translated into clinical trials. Her own research was mainly funded by MRC and ARUK in the field of genetics and regulation of genes in inflammation, in particular the cytokine genes and their association with juvenile idiopathic arthritis. She has published over 200 original publications, 68 reviews and book chapters, edited three editions of the Oxford Textbook of Rheumaotlogy, and is senior author of the handbook: Paediatric Rheumatology in Clinical Practice.
She is currently on the UK Clinical Strategy Group for Paediatric Rheumatology. She co-founded the Paediatric Rheumatology International Trials Organisation in 1996. She also founded the Paediatric Rheumatology European Society in 1999 and was its first president for the first 6 years..
She was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences, UK, in 2001, and was awarded the CBE in 2005 for services to medicine by the Queen.
