Dorian Haskard

Dorian Haskard is a rheumatologist, author, and academic. He is an emeritus professor at Imperial College London.

Haskard is an elected fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the Linnean Society of London and the United Kingdom Academy of Medical Sciences.

Education Haskard studied at the University of Oxford, where he earned a BA in Physiology and Psychology in 1973. He then pursued medicine at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, University of London, graduating with an MBBS in 1977. In 1981, he became a Member of the Royal College of Physicians of London after passing its membership examination. He was later awarded a Doctorate in Medicine by the University of Oxford in 1989.

Clinical and academic work Haskard was awarded an Arthritis and Rheumatism Council (Versus Arthritis) Research Fellowship at the Bone and Joint Research Unit of the London Hospital Medical College, where he trained in the generation of monoclonal antibodies. He was later appointed to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, where he worked in the laboratory of Morris Ziff. His research identified the role of the adhesion protein LFA-1 in lymphocyte adherence to unstimulated endothelial cells and revealed a novel adhesion mechanism induced by interleukin-1, later attributed to VCAM-1. Upon returning to the UK, he was awarded a Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellowship at Guy's Hospital in 1987, Using these antibodies, he conducted histological studies that demonstrated increased adhesion molecule expression in atherosclerosis.

In 1990, Haskard was appointed senior clinical lecturer at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School (RPMS) at Hammersmith Hospital, the inflammatory potential of vascular calcification in atherosclerotic plaques, the protective role of IgM antibodies in atherosclerosis, the post-transcriptional regulation of tissue factor expression, and the detection of antibodies to oxidized low-density lipoproteins for cardiac risk classification. He served as chairman of the British Atherosclerosis Society from 2008 to 2010. and his research group was among the first in the UK to study its mechanisms. From 2013 to 2017, he led the rheumatology theme within Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. from 2018 to 2022.

Between 2004 and 2017, Haskard headed the Vascular Sciences Section of the National Heart and Lung Institute. He subsequently led the Division of Immunology and Inflammation from 2010 to 2017, and the Division of Clinical Cardiovascular Science from 2017 to 2018. and as proconsul from 2022 to 2025. He also established the annual Imperial College Science in Medicine School Team Prize and currently holds the title of emeritus professor at Imperial College.

Awards and honors 1989 – Michael Mason Prize, The British Society for Rheumatology 2001 – Fellowship, Academy of Medical Sciences 2019 – Fellowship, Linnean Society of London