Imagine waking up and feeling so much pain and stiffness in your joints that every movement is agony . . . but even your consultant rheumatologist tells you s/he doesn’t yet know which type of arthritis you have.

Chris Buckley is one such consultant rheumatologist as well as being Professor of Rheumatology at the University of Birmingham. His work and that of his colleagues, Andrew Filer and Karim Raza, leads him to suggest, however, soon they will be able to create and manage individualised treatments for each patient, such as currently occurs for patients with some kinds of cancer.

Professor Buckley received his MBBS from the University of London in 1990, having obtained a degree in biochemsitry from the University of Oxford in 1985. He trained in rheumatology at the Hammersmith Hospital with Mark Walport (currently Director of the Wellcome Trust) and Dorian Haskard, and then completed a DPhil with David Simmons at the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford in 1996 . He then moved to the Rheumatology Unit in Birmingham as a Wellcome Trust Clinician Scientist and in 2001 was appointed as MRC Senior Clinical Fellow at the Division of Immunity and Infection at the MRC Centre for Immune Regulation. He was appointed Professor of Rheumatology in 2002.

His current research focus is an analysis of mechanisms of leukocyte accumulation in chronic inflammation.