Professor Benjamin Fisher MD(Res)

Image of Dr Benjamin Fisher

Department of Inflammation and Ageing
Professor in Rheumatology

Contact details

Telephone
+44 (0)121 371 3201
Email
b.fisher@bham.ac.uk
Address
Department of Inflammation and Ageing
University 麻豆精选 Research Labs
Queen Elizabeth Hospital
Mindelsohn Way
Birmingham
B15 2WB

Ben Fisher is a Professor in Clinical Rheumatology. He has published research papers on Sjögren’s syndrome and inflammatory arthritis and has participated in many national and international collaborations.

Ben is part of a team who designed the recent COVID-19 drugs trial ‘CATALYST’, which rapidly tests new therapies for patients hospitalised due to COVID-19. It is hoped that by using drugs that target the most serious symptoms of the virus, the severity of the disease could be reduced leading to a reduction in the number of patients needing to be admitted to intensive care and ultimately, a reduction in virus related deaths.

Ben is also an integral part of the .

Qualifications

  • MD(Res) Medicine 2011
  • MRCP 2002
  • MBBS 1999
  • BSc (Hons) Immunology 1996

Biography

Benjamin Fisher studied medicine at the United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospitals in London, obtaining a BSc (Hons) in Immunology in 1996 and his MBBS in 1999. He trained as a Rheumatologist in London with academic studies at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, Imperial College London. Here he worked in the clinical trials unit and completed an MD(Res) on antibodies to citrullinated alpha enolase peptides in rheumatoid arthritis. Following this he was appointed as a Walport Clinical Lecturer at Imperial College. He joined the University 麻豆精选 as a Senior Clinical Lecturer in 2012.

Research

A key focus of Professor Fisher's current work is on clinical trials in inflammatory disease, especially Sjögren’s syndrome. Sjögren’s syndrome is an autoimmune condition resulting in dryness of the eyes and mouth, alongside a range of other complications that occur in a proportion of patients. Currently there are no existing disease-modifying therapies. However Ben's team have an active clinical trials programme and he presented data from a commercially sponsored trial of a novel agent blocking CD40 at the American College of Rheumatology annual congress in 2017. This was the first trial, to their knowledge, to show positive effects prospectively on a validated measure of systemic activity in a double-blind randomised controlled trial. Professor Fisher is chief investigator for the Optimising Assessments in Sjögren’s Syndrome (OASIS) cohort that has a number of objectives including to identify biomarkers of disease activity from blood, saliva and tissue, that may help inform future clinical trial design. He is a deputy clinical director at the Cancer Research UK clinical trials unit Birmingham, leading the Inflammation and Advanced Cellular Therapies (I-ACT) team.

Ben also has a longstanding interest in risk factors for autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and Sjögren’s syndrome, including autoantibodies and diet.

Lay summary

Sjögren’s syndrome is a disease where the body’s immune system causes inflammation in the glands that produce tears and saliva causing dryness. It is associated with profound fatigue in a large number of patients and together, these symptoms cause a large reduction in health-related quality of life. In a proportion of patients the disease also affects other body systems such as the joints and the lungs. There are no therapies proven to modify the underlying immune disease, but they have an active programme to study new drugs from industrial partners, including those blocking CD40 which in an early trial has shown some promise. CD40 has a role in how cells of the immune system activate each other. Professor Fisher also has an interest in how to measure how active a patient’s disease is, and to understand risk factors for disease such as diet; i.e. what makes a person more likely to develop Sjögren’s syndrome or rheumatoid arthritis, when others do not.

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Tryposkiadis, K, Nayar, S, Pucino, V, Smith, CG, Brown, RM, Bates, T, Bowman, SJ, Sitch, A, Price, M, Barone, F, Deeks, J & Fisher, BA 2025, '', Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

Roche Fibroblast Network Consortium 2025, '', Nature Communications, vol. 16, no. 1, 5.

Cope, A, Jasenecova, M, Vasconcelos, J, Filer, A, Raza, K, Qureshi, S, D'Agostino, M-A, McInnes, IB, Isaacs, J, Pratt, AG, Fisher, B, Buckley, CD, Emery, P, Ho, P, Buch, MH, Ciurtin, C, van Schaardenburg, D, Huizinga, TWJ, Toes, R, Georgiou, E, Kelly, J, Murphy, CL, Prevost, AT & APIPPRA Study Investigators 2024, '', The Lancet.

Worth, C, Al-Mossawi, H, MacDonald, J, Fisher, B, Chan, A, Sengupta, R, Packham, J, Gaffney, K, Gullick, N, Cook, J, Corn, T, Teh, J, Machado, P, Taylor, P & Bowness, P 2024, '', The Lancet Rheumatology.

Tison, A, Jousse-Joulin, S, Consigny, M, Moog, P, Hofauer, B, Hachulla, E, Lamotte, C, Morel, J, Mouterde, G, Milic, V, Bootsma, H, Stel, A, Fisher, BA, Maybury, M, Baer, A, DiRenzo, D, Kim, H-R, Min, H-K, Lee, S-S, Choi, S-E, Alegria, GC, Boisram茅, S, Guellec, D, Cornec, D, Qu茅r茅, B, Jonsson, M, Hammenfors, D, Saraux, A & Devauchelle-Pensec, V 2024, '', Rheumatology.

Price, EJ, Benjamin, S, Bombardieri, M, Bowman, S, Carty, S, Ciurtin, C, Crampton, B, Dawson, A, Fisher, BA, Giles, I, Glennon, P, Gupta, M, Hackett, KL, Larkin, G, Ng, W-F, Ramanan, AV, Rassam, S, Rauz, S, Smith, G, Sutcliffe, N, Tappuni, A & Walsh, SB 2024, '', Rheumatology (Oxford, England).

Christ, L, Kissling, S, Finckh, A, Fisher, B, Adler, S, Maurer, B, M枚ller, B & Kollert, F 2024, '', Arthritis Research & Therapy, vol. 26, no. 1, 68.

Berry, JS, Tarn, J, Casement, J, Duret, P-M, Scott, L, Wood, K, Johnsen, S-J, Nordmark, G, Devauchelle-Pensec, V, Seror, R, Fisher, B, Barone, F, Bowman, SJ, Bombardieri, M, Lendrem, D, Felten, R, Gottenberg, J-E & Ng, W-F 2024, '', Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, vol. 83, no. 1, pp. 88-95.

Qu茅r茅, B, Saraux, A, Carvajal-Alegria, G, Guellec, D, Mouterde, G, Lamotte, C, Hammenfors, D, Jonsson, M, Choi, S-E, Hong-Ki, M, Stel, A, Fisher, BA, Maybury, M, Hofauer, B, Ferro, F, Milic, V, Direnzo, D, Devauchelle-Pensec, V & Jousse-Joulin, S 2024, '', Rheumatology and Therapy, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 411-423.

D枚rner, T, Bowman, SJ, Fox, R, Mariette, X, Papas, A, Grader-Beck, T, Fisher, BA, Barcelos, F, De Vita, S, Schulze-Koops, H, Moots, RJ, Junge, G, Woznicki, J, Sopala, M, Avrameas, A, Luo, W-L & Hueber, W 2024, '', Arthritis and Rheumatology.

TWINSS study group, Fisher, B, Mariette, X, Papas, A, Grader-Beck, T, Bootsma, H, Ng, W-F, van Daele, PLA, Finzel, S, Noaiseh, G, Elgueta, S, Hermann, J, McCoy, S, Akpek, E, Bookman, A, Sopala, M, Montecchi-Palmer, M, Luo, W-L, Scheurer, C & Hueber, W 2024, '', The Lancet.

Marvel, J, Gargon, E, Howse, C, Chohan, A, Mayhew, M, Kenney, G, Stone, L, Fisher, BA, Steenackers, M, Williamson, N, Perella, C & Goswami, P 2024, '', Rheumatology and Therapy.

Gordon, RA, Nguyen, Y, Foulquier, N, Beydon, M, Gheita, TA, Hajji, R, Sahbudin, I, Hoi, A, Ng, W-F, Mendon莽a, JA, Wallace, DJ, Shea, B, Bruyn, GAW, Goodman, SM, Fisher, BA, Baldini, C, Torralba, KD, Bootsma, H, Akpek, EK, Karakus, S, Baer, AN, Chakravarty, SD, Terslev, L, D'agostino, M-A, Mariette, X, Direnzo, D, Rasmussen, A, Papas, A, Montoya, C, Arends, S, Md Yusof, MY, Pintilie, I, Warner, BM, Hammitt, KM, Strand, V, Bouillot, C, Tugwell, P, Inanc, N, Andreu, JL, Wahren-Herlenius, M, Devauchelle-Pensec, V, Shiboski, CH, Benyoussef, A, Masli, S, Lee, AYS, Cornec, D, Bowman, S, Rischmueller, M, Mccoy, SS & Seror, R 2024, '', Seminars in arthritis and rheumatism, vol. 65, 152378.

Literature review

Bandeira, M & Fisher, B 2024, '', Clinical and Experimental Rheumatology, vol. 42, no. 12, pp. 2346-2356.

Review article

Ruscitti, P, Allanore, Y, Baldini, C, Barilaro, G, Bocci, EB, Bearzi, P, Bellis, E, Berardicurti, O, Biaggi, A, Bombardieri, M, Cantarini, L, Cantatore, FP, Caporali, R, Caso, F, Cervera, R, Ciccia, F, Cipriani, P, Chatzis, L, Colafrancesco, S, Conti, F, Corberi, E, Costa, L, Currado, D, Cutolo, M, D'Angelo, S, Del Galdo, F, Di Cola, I, Di Donato, S, Distler, O, D'Onofrio, B, Doria, A, Fautrel, B, Fasano, S, Feist, E, Fisher, BA, Gabini, M, Gandolfo, S, Gatto, M, Genovali, I, Gerli, R, Grembiale, RD, Guggino, G, Hoffmann-Vold, AM, Iagnocco, A, Iaquinta, FS, Liakouli, V, Manoussakis, MN, Marino, A, Mauro, D, Montecucco, C, Mosca, M, Naty, S, Navarini, L, Occhialini, D, Orefice, V, Perosa, F, Perricone, C, Pilato, A, Pitzalis, C, Pontarini, E, Prete, M, Priori, R, Rivellese, F, Sarzi-Puttini, P, Scarpa, R, Sebastiani, G, Selmi, C, Shoenfeld, Y, Triolo, G, Trunfio, F, Yan, Q, Tzioufas, AG & Giacomelli, R 2024, '', Autoimmunity Reviews.