Sir Keith Peters GBE FMedSci FRS

Keith Peters scientific contributions have been in the field of autoimmunity in diseases of the kidney and blood vessels. He pioneered the use of plasma exchange both as a therapy to remove damaging circulating autoantibodies and as an investigative tool to establish that such circulating antibodies were indeed pathogenic-notably with John Newsom-Davis in myasthenia gravis. With Peter Lachmann he conducted research on the complement system in nephritis showing that an autoantibody to determinants on a complement enzyme made it resistant to its physiological inhibitors resulting in systemic complement activation, which in turn created a predisposition to certain renal and retinal diseases. As Regius Professor of Physic (1987-2005) he was responsible for the expansion of Cambridge’s School of Clinical Medicine and was a driving force for the creation of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, now the largest biomedical campus in Europe. As Interim Director of the MRC’s National Institute of Research (2006-8) he instigated the discussions with CRUK’s London Research Institute which led to the creation of the Francis Crick Institute. Peters was President of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2002-2006). From 2005-2016 he was a senior advisor to the President of R&D at GSK and from 2004-7 co-chair of the Council of Science and Technology.