What have you achieved so far

We’ve done a lot. Firstly, we are the organisation that is mainly responsible for teaching tomorrows doctors and other healthcare workers about arthritis, how it should be treated and how it should be managed. And I think the contribution Arthritis Research UK has made to education in arthritis and Musculoskeletal diseases is the envy of other specialties within this country as well as in other countries. Secondly, we have established a network of researchers from the length and breadth of the country who are devoting their careers to researching as hard as they can to find out some of the key facts we need to know about arthritis. We’ve had a lot of success so far; there’s still a long way to go but among the successes we know an enormous amount about, for example, the genetic background to arthritis, why some people get it and why others don’t. We’ve also been able to identify that some of the pathways, the biological and chemical pathways that go wrong when people develop arthritis and by doing that, that provides us with an entry point into finding new treatments. And from that, I have to say, we’ve been spectacularly successful. Research funded by Arthritis Research UK has provided the largest single contribution to new treatments in arthritis the world had seen in the past generation. Now this new treatment provides a tremendous benefit to a large number of people. It’s not a cure for everybody, so we’ve not reached the end of our research, but what it’s done is provided us with the confidence that by funding the research we do we can make a phenomenal impact. And indeed we, and of course the researchers who have been funded by Arthritis Reseach UK, are genuinely proud of what they’ve achieved, it’s a fantastic step forward.