Graeme Stewart | |
---|---|
Born | 1946 (age 77–78) |
Nationality | Australian |
Education | BSc(Med) MBBS PhD |
Known for | Genetic contributions to Multiple Sclerosis |
Medical career | |
Profession | Clinical Professor of Medicine |
Field | Immunology |
Institutions |
Graeme John Stewart, AM , MB BS, PhD, FRACP, FRCPA (born 1946 [1] ) is an Australian consultant physician, medical researcher in the field of immunology, and a community health advocate. He is Clinical Professor of Medicine in the Westmead Institute for Medical Research, University of Sydney.
Since the 1970s, his research has focussed on the genetic bases of HIV/AIDS, Multiple Sclerosis, and inherited diseases. The biggest project was leading the Australasian component of the International Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium (IMSGC) that identified the 57 genes which are involved in multiple sclerosis. He founded and led the Department of Clinical Immunology and Allergy at Westmead Hospital, and the Institute for Immunology and Allergy Research (IIAR) at the Westmead Millennium Institute.
In 2002 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for his contributions to health policy, medical education, and research. Stewart retired from clinical practice in 2021, although he continues his research and teaching roles.
Stewart studied medicine at the University of Sydney, graduating with an MBBS in 1970. He went on to pursue a PhD at the same university; his thesis was published in 1980, on "The HLA system and multiple sclerosis" and he graduated in 1981. [2]
Stewart was appointed to the role of Clinical Professor of Medicine at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research, in the Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney in 2005. His career has encompassed conducting research into the genetic contributions to auto-immune diseases, setting up and running medical organizations, in addition to his academic role. His clinical speciality is infection and immunity. [3] [4] [5] [6]
In 2021 he retired from clinical practice. He continues his research into Multiple Sclerosis at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research and also his teaching role at the University of Sydney. [7]
Steward was heavily involved in dealing with the AIDS pandemic.
In September 1985, he published in The Lancet the first evidence that HIV had been transmitted by artificial insemination. This followed four cases where women were believed to have been infected during IVF procedures with infected sperm in 1982, before the disease was well known and there were no testing procedures. He championed testing all sperm donors for AIDS. [8] [9]
In 1988, he was an organizer of a six-week international course to train senior clinicians and nursing educators from ten countries, which was organized in conjunction with the World Health Organization Regional Training Centre for Training Development. [10] Later that year, he attended an international AIDS conference in Stockholm, and realized the need for a professional body in Australia which specialized in the field. On his return, he set up the Australian Society of AIDS Physicians, now called the Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine (ASHM) to co-ordinate communication and support between different medical disciplines that are involved with the disease. [11] [12]
He wrote the book Could it Be HIV? in 1993 which was published by the Medical Journal of Australia, who sent a copy to every doctor to help them to identify the disease sooner. In 1993 he summarized the extent of the problem of undetected cases: up to 75% of people who became sick from AIDS had never been tested for the virus, and 30% of sufferers first discovered that they had the virus after their illness became medically serious. He urged doctors to take a more active role in testing patients, especially those who were at higher risk. [13] In 1996 he published a seven-part series for general practitioners in The Medical journal of Australia on "Managing HIV", aiming to disseminate the most important lessons learned to date. This was published as the book Managing HIV, also published by the Medical Journal of Australia, and funded by the Commonwealth Department of Health. [14] [15] [12] In 1996, aware that people around the world who get infected with HIV will not receive the benefits of advanced medical treatment, he published a set of guidelines to show how each country can work with its limited health resources to provide the best possible care. [16]
Early indications that an inherited defect in the CCR5 gene would give immunity, and that this might be used to develop a vaccine or drugs, were thwarted by the discovery of a man who had the defect yet had caught AIDS. In a 1997 paper in Nature Medicine, Stewart and collaborators found that the defect is nevertheless partially protective, since it appears in about 1% of the population yet this study found only that one subject out of 3000 who had the defect and caught AIDS. [17] His research also looked into associated areas such as periodontitis (gum disease) progress in HIV positive patients. [18]
In 1999, Stewart was appointed to chair the committee that provided expert advice about the program of research into HIV/AIDS. [19]
Stewart started studying Multiple Sclerosis (MS) in 1975. [20] It is a progressive disease, where the patient's own immune system attacks and destroys the myelin insulation covering nerves, which means they are less able to conduct signals, causing paralysis and distorted sensation (typically pain, numbness, and pins & needles). The disease affects around 2.5 million people around the world. Nearly two-thirds of sufferers are unable to keep a full-time job. Research continues into the reason why this disease process happens. [21] [22]
A combination of genetic and environmental factors have long been suspected to contribute to which people develop MS, but it has proven to be very difficult to identify the exact causes. This has led to widespread speculation which is not supported by evidence, which Stewart has helped to counter. In 1998, Stewart wrote about a Scottish court case where the family of an MS sufferer attempted to blame it on a traffic accident. [23] In 2002, he pointed out that claims by Dr Christopher Hawkes that MS was caused by sexual promiscuity or sexual abuse were not supported by any evidence, calling them "pure speculation". [24] In 2009, he published a paper showing how certain members of the vitamin D family interacted with genetic variations to affect T-cell functioning in ways that could increase the risk of developing MS. [25]
Stewart led the Australia and New Zealand contingent in the International Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium (IMSGC) that identified the 57 genes which combine in subtle ways to change the function of the immune system in ways that can lead to multiple sclerosis (MS). It was known through epidemiological studies that relatives of people with MS were at significantly higher risk of having the condition themselves, so increasingly sophisticated genetic studies had been conducted. The IMSGC study involved groups with over 250 researchers from 15 countries with over 27,000 people of whom 9,772 had MS, in order to identify the genetic architecture that makes people susceptible to MS. The results were published in Nature in 2011. [26] Stewart was also a governance member of the IMSGC and a member of the Project Direction Committee for the Nature study. [27] The study also found that vitamin D played an important role. [20]
A related paper in the journal PLoS Genetics showed that there was an unexpectedly high level of genetic commonality between autoimmune (AI) diseases: of the 107 genetic variants that are linked to an AI disease, nearly half are also found in at least one other AI disease. [28]
In 2012, Stewart joined with orthopaedic surgeons and other specialists to develop a risk assessment tool called POSSUM, which accurately predicted the chances of mortality and morbidity from orthopaedic surgeries. [29]
Stewart founded the Department of Clinical Immunology and Allergy at Westmead Hospital, and he served as its head. [30] [4] [5]
In 1996, he founded the Institute for Immunology and Allergy Research (IIAR) at the Westmead Millennium Institute (now known as the Westmead Institute for Medical Research), and he served as its director. [5] His philosophy was that "clinical care is best delivered with teaching, training and research.” [31] The IIAR was one of the Westmead Millennium Institute's four founding research groups. [32]
In 2000, Stewart was appointed to a Clinical Council which oversaw the implementation of the state government's $2 billion program of health reforms. [33] He serves on the Scientific Research Committee of the Trish MS Research Foundation. [7]
When the COVID-19 pandemic spread, Stewart wrote for newspapers and spoke on radio shows to educate the public about the disease, its management, and vaccination. [34] [35] He emphasized the distinction between people who were the "vaccine hesitant" and those who were "vaccine resistant". [36] He had a recurring half-hour segment on ABC Radio's afternoon show, [37] [38] and he repeated the same themes in medical journals, giving a broader perspective to General Practitioners. [39]
He has been called as an expert witness on legal cases. In 1999, he testified to the NSW Supreme Court in a case about AIDS protocols for physicians. [40] In 2004, he was selected to join the expert panel evaluating charges that well-known immunologist Bruce Hall had acquired research grants on the basis of falsified results, and subsequent controversy about how the new vice chancellor handled the case. [41] [42]
In 2013, Stewart partnered with his brother Richard Stewart to raise money for MS research by holding the "Kiss Goodbye to MS" campaign in conjunction with Whale Beach's Big Swim. [43]
Stewart is a board member of NSW Health Pathology and Multiple Sclerosis Research Australia. He is a researcher at the Children's Medical Research Institute, he has served on its board since 2002, and he is the chair of the institute's Intellectual Property Committee. [44]
In the 2002 Queen's Birthday honours, Stewart was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in recognition of his "service to the development of health policy and medical education about HIV and AIDS, to medicine in the field of immunology, and to research on the genetics of multiple sclerosis". [45]
In 2015, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of NSW. [46]
Stewart wrote the following books:
He is extensively published in academic journals. As of March 2022 [update] , ResearchGate lists 315 journal publications, which have been cited 13,992 times. [47] Scopus lists 233 publications (169 as Graeme John Stewart, with an h-index of 44, [48] and another 64 as Graeme J Stewart [49] ). PubMed lists 62 publications. [50]
Westmead is a suburb in Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Westmead is located 26 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district in the local government areas of City of Parramatta and Cumberland Council and is part of the Greater Western Sydney region.
WEHI, previously known as the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, and as the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, is Australia's oldest medical research institute. Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet, who won the Nobel Prize in 1960 for his work in immunology, was director from 1944 to 1965. Burnet developed the ideas of clonal selection and acquired immune tolerance. Later, Professor Donald Metcalf discovered and characterised colony-stimulating factors. As of 2015, the institute hosted more than 750 researchers who work to understand, prevent and treat diseases including blood, breast and ovarian cancers; inflammatory diseases (autoimmunity) such as rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes and coeliac disease; and infectious diseases such as malaria, HIV and hepatitis B and C.
Westmead Hospital is a major teaching hospital in Sydney, Australia. Opened on 10 November 1978, the 975-bed hospital forms part of the Western Sydney Local Health District, and is a teaching hospital of Sydney Medical School at the University of Sydney.
St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney is a leading tertiary referral hospital and research facility located in Darlinghurst, Sydney. Though funded and integrated into the New South Wales state public health system, it is operated by St Vincent's Health Australia. It is affiliated with the University of Tasmania College of Health and Medicine and the University of New South Wales Medical School.
Merrylands High School is a coeducational, comprehensive high school in Merrylands, a suburb in Western Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
The history of HIV/AIDS in Australia is distinctive, as Australian government bodies recognised and responded to the AIDS pandemic relatively swiftly, with the implementation of effective disease prevention and public health programs, such as needle and syringe programs (NSPs). As a result, despite significant numbers of at-risk group members contracting the virus in the early period following its discovery, Australia achieved and has maintained a low rate of HIV infection in comparison to the rest of the world.
The Vaccine Research Center (VRC), is an intramural division of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The mission of the VRC is to discover and develop both vaccines and antibody-based products that target infectious diseases.
Eugene O. "Gene" Major is a senior investigator at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a part of the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH). Major conducts research into the neurological diseases including progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML), caused by JC virus and often found in immunosuppressed patients such as those with HIV/AIDS. Major has published over 140 scientific articles and reviews in the peer-reviewed literature and has contributed to Fields Virology, a standard virology textbook.
Gladstone Institutes is an American independent, non-profit biomedical research organization whose focus is to better understand, prevent, treat and cure cardiovascular, viral and neurological conditions such as heart failure, HIV/AIDS and Alzheimer's disease. Its researchers study these diseases using techniques of basic and translational science. Another focus at Gladstone is building on the development of induced pluripotent stem cell technology by one of its investigators, 2012 Nobel Laureate Shinya Yamanaka, to improve drug discovery, personalized medicine and tissue regeneration.
The Westmead Institute for Medical Research is a large medical research institute located at Westmead in the western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. The institute is closely affiliated with Sydney Medical School and Westmead Hospital and comprises approximately 450 medical research and support staff. Originally named the Westmead Millennium Institute for Medical Research, the institute was founded in 1996 through the merging of five research groups at the Westmead health campus, initially comprising just 40 medical researchers, and was renamed on 18 November 2015. The Westmead Institute has grown rapidly on the basis of peer-reviewed funding.
Michael Stuart Gottlieb is an American physician and immunologist known for his 1981 identification of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) as a new disease, and for his HIV/AIDS research, HIV/AIDS activism, and philanthropic efforts associated with HIV/AIDS treatment.
Stephen L. Hauser is a professor of the Department of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) specializing in immune mechanisms and multiple sclerosis (MS). He has contributed to the establishment of consortia that have identified more than 50 gene variants that contribute to MS risk.
Pathogens and Global Health is a peer-reviewed medical journal published by Taylor & Francis. It covers tropical diseases, including their microbiology, epidemiology and molecular biology, as well as medical entomology, HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. The editor-in-chief is Andrea Crisanti.
David A. Hafler is an American neurologist. He is the Edgerly Professor and chairman of the department of Neurology at the Yale School of Medicine, where he works on immunity, genetics, and multiple sclerosis. In 2018, he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.
Dr Eugen Molodysky OAM, MMBS is an academic and medical practitioner in preventive medicine and translational research. His research has been published in peer reviewed journals over the last 30 years. His clinical work has contributed to the early identification of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s epidemic in Australia.
David Albert Cooper was an Australian HIV/AIDS researcher, immunologist, professor at the University of New South Wales, and the director of the Kirby Institute. He and Professor Ron Penny diagnosed the first case of HIV in Australia.
John Michael Dwyer, is an Australian doctor, professor of medicine, and public health advocate. He was originally a Professor of Medicine and Paediatrics, then Head of the Department of Clinical Immunology at Yale University. Returning to Australia, he became Head of the Department of Medicine and the Clinical Dean at the University of New South Wales and Director of Medicine at Sydney's Prince of Wales Hospital, the University's major teaching hospital, for over twenty years. In retirement he is an Emeritus Professor of Medicine of the University. He founded the Australian Health Care Reform Alliance, and was the founding president of the Friends of Science in Medicine until 2019. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for his service to public health.
Multiple Sclerosis Australia, or MS Australia, is a national non-profit organization in Australia that coordinates and allocates funds for multiple sclerosis research.
Ronald Penny, was an Australian immunologist who made the first diagnosis of HIV/AIDS in Australia in 1982.
Dominic E. Dwyer is an Australian microbiologist and Clinical Professor of Medicine for Immunology and Infectious Diseases at The University of Sydney's School of Medicine. He came from Saint Joseph's College school, that is also located at Sydney, before going to university.