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.
Sir Keith Peters GBE FMedSci FRS
