Professor Dennis McGonagle

Profile

Dennis McGonagle FRCPI, PhD trained in medicine at University College Dublin and graduated in 1990. He trained in General Medicine and Rheumatology at St James University Teaching Hospital in Dublin and at the Leeds General Infirmary UK.  He is currently Professor of Investigative Rheumatology at the NIHR funded Academic Unit for the Musculoskeletal Diseases and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.  

His major interests include the use of imaging to understand pathogenic mechanisms of arthritis in man, tissue microanatomy studies and laboratory studies into mechanisms of therapeutic responses to drugs.  He has undertaken research into enthesopathy for 20 years. 

He has published several articles relevant to understanding disease mechanisms and a pathological oriented classification of psoriatic arthritis and has developed a new mechanistic classification of inflammatory disease.   In Spondyloarthropathy his work has helped elucidate the central role of the enthesis in disease and has shown how the enthesis anchors the nail to the skeleton.   In osteoarthritis (OA) his work has shown the emerging role of collateral ligaments/entheses in early hand OA and he has also developed new mechanistic classifications for OA. 

His second interest is the use of unmanipulated stem cells for arthritis therapy development where seminal papers on the in vivo phenotype of adult mesenchymal stem cells with colleagues (Jones/Baboolal) at the University of Leeds.  

His funding sources include or have included the Wellcome Trust-EPSRC, UK NIHR, ARUK, MRC UK and EU FP7 programme.   He also has a strong portfolio of industry-funded studies into research in spondyloarthropathy.     

Qualifications

• MB MCH BAO (First class honours in medicine.)
• FRCP1
• PhD

Professional memberships

• The American College of Rheumatology
• The British Society for Rheumatology
• The Irish Society for Rheumatology
• Input document to the UK Stem Cell Initiative 2006

Student education

Supervision of 3 PhD projects. One of my students has been awarded the British Society of Rheumatology Young Investigator of the Year Award 2003. 

Supervison of 2 MD students.

Supervison of 2 MPHil Students

Research groups and institutes

• Leeds Institute of Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Medicine
• Immunity and inflammation
• Musculoskeletal disease
• Targets and therapies
• Regenerative medicine