Professor Andrew Filer FRCP PhD

Andrew Filer

Department of Inflammation and Ageing
Professor of Translational Rheumatology

Contact details

Telephone
+44 (0)121 371 3221
Fax
+44 (0)121 415 5475
Email
a.filer@bham.ac.uk
Twitter
@a_filer
View my research portal
Address
Rheumatology Research Group
Department of Inflammation and Ageing
College of Medicine and Health
University of Birmingham
Queen Elizabeth Hospital
Birmingham, B15 2WB

Andrew Filer is a passionate advocate for translational medicine, integrating patient cohorts and samples with high quality basic science. He brings skills in musculoskeletal ultrasound and the novel Ultrasound guided synovial biopsy technique to bear upon the Birmingham BEACON early arthritis research cohort and interventional clinical trials in arthritis.

Andrew is a member of the Department of Inflammation and Ageing and an integral part of the NIHR Birmingham Biomedical Research Centre.

Qualifications

Senior Lecturer and Honorary Consultant Rheumatologist

  • Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, 2014
  • PhD in immunology, 2006
  • Member of the Royal College of Physicians, 1998
  • MBChB (with honours), 1995
  • BSc (hons) in Medical Biochemical Studies, 1992

Biography

Andrew Filer graduated from Medical School at the University of Birmingham in 1995, working in Birmingham at first, then in Australia before returning to take up an MRC clinical training fellowship and gaining his PhD in Birmingham.

With Dr Karim Raza he has run the Birmingham Early Arthritis Clinic for five years, working on novel clinical, serological and imaging predictors of outcome in the very early window of arthritis. He is an experienced musculoskeletal sonographer, and uses his skills to answer clinical questions, practice a wide variety of imaging guided procedures, and also to investigate the role of musculoskeletal ultrasound as a predictive tool in early arthritis.

His Versus Arthritis clinician scientist fellowship focuses on the role of stromal cell subpopulations in the pathobiology of early rheumatoid arthritis, and the development of stromal cell based therapies for inflammatory arthritis. This interest is linked to imaging via the use of novel, minimally invasive ultrasound guided biopsy techniques to obtain samples from the joint.

Teaching

Teaching Programmes

  • BMedSc
  • Intercalated Clinical Sciences BMedSc - Rheumatology and Orthopaedics Musculoskeletal module coordinator
  • Clinical Oncology MSc/PG Dip
  • MBChB
    • 4th year lead for Musculoskeletal Medicine
    • Tutor and Lecturer on the Immunology module for 2nd year and GEC students
    • Regular clinical teaching commitments with 3rd year/4th year students and foundation doctors
  • MSc Immunology and Immunotherapy - Lecturer on this and anatomy courses

Other Teaching

  • Graduate school coordinator for MD students in the College
  • Member of the EPSRC Physical Sciences for Health (Sci-Phy-4-Health) Integrated PhD imaging consortium and Lecturer
  • Supervisor of doctors on the Academic Clinical Training program
  • Teacher on selected clinical Ultrasound Courses

Postgraduate supervision

Dr Filer has previously supervised or co-supervised 4 PhD students to completion and continues to supervise or co-supervise a further 4 current students. Dr Filer is interested in supervising doctoral research students in the following areas:

  • Stromal-Leucocyte interactions
  • The role of stroma cells in the progression of rheumatoid arthritis
  • The role of ultrasound Imaging in research in early arthritis
  • The role of tissue biomarkers in prediction of outcome and disease stratification in early arthritis
  • The role of multiple frequency optical imaging as a research tool in arthritis

If you are interesting in studying any of these subject areas please contact Dr Andrew Filer directly, or for any general doctoral research enquiries, please email mds-gradschool@contacts.bham.ac.uk.

For a full list of available Doctoral Research opportunities, please visit our Doctoral Research programme listings.

Research

Investigating pathways of persistence of disease and resolution of inflammation in early arthritis:

This work uses stromal cell resources and tissue from patients in the BEACON cohort that captures patients in the early stages of arthritis. I use multiple methodologies through a collaborative approach to interrogate the phenotype of stromal cells from different diseases and different stages of rheumatoid arthritis to understand fully the contribution of these cells to inflammation and damage in arthritis, and the change in cellular phenotype during the early development and progression of rheumatoid arthritis. In vitro cellular work is validated in tissue (Scheel-Toellner group). Methodologies include transcriptomics (Clark group), microRNA and methylome analysis (Gay group, Zurich, Novartis), metabolomics (Young, Tennant groups). The functional phenotype of these cells is investigated in multicellular models of disease investigating stromal cell:leucocyte interactions (McGettrick group and Novartis).

Translation and intervention:

Understanding the processes underlying persistence and resolution of inflammation would be of little use if it did not inform patient treatment. This work includes development of mesenchymal stromal cellular therapies in arthritis (Orbsen therapeutics) and repurposing of therapies targeting stromal cells in cancer for use in rheumatoid arthritis (MRC dpfs funded TRAFIC trial with AR-UK RACE Centres).

Imaging:

Use and development of novel imaging modalities including musculoskeletal ultrasound in clinical research. Ultrasound imaging is a key technology enabling the collection of tissue and cellular resources from patients in the BEACON cohort, but has an increasingly important role in objective measurement of synovial inflammation. This work includes: Identifying predictors of outcome in the early phases of disease and the use of ultrasound as an outcome measure in clinical trials. I am a member of the OMERACT US SIG and run ultrasound imaging in the APIPPRA international multicentre trial intervening with biologic therapy in patients with inflammatory arthralgia at high risk of RA.

Other activities

  • OMERACT Ultrasound Special Interest Group, 2014-present
  • Birmingham and the Black Country CLRN Musculoskeletal Speciality Group Lead, 2012-2014
  • University Hospitals Birmingham CDRC executive board, 2011-2013
  • Midland Rheumatology Society Treasurer and Executive Committee member, 2009-2013
  • British Society for Rheumatology Education and Training Committee, 2001-2005
  • ARC Education Subcommittee, 2001-2004

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Cartography Consortium, Liu, F, Shi, H, Turner, JD, Anscombe, R, Li, J, Sekine, T, Hammitzsch, A, Agarwal, D, Mahony, C, Chen, J, Kendrick, B, Du, D, Tong, Q, Duan, L, Dooley, K, Fang, H, Korsunsky, I, Madhu, R, Cribbs, AP, Friedrich, M, Marsden, BD, Chen, Y-L, Ogg, G, Adams, A, Chen, W, Leonardo, S, McCann, FE, Buckley, CD, Rooney, T, Freeman, T, Uhlig, HH, Dendrou, C, Croft, A, Filer, A, Bowness, P & Chen, L 2025, 'CD4+ tissue-resident memory Th17 cells are a major source of IL-17A in Spondyloarthritis synovial tissue', Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, vol. 84, no. 7, pp. 1151-1163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ard.2025.04.018

Rayner, F, Hiu, S, Melville, A, Bigirumurame, T, Anderson, AE, Dyke, B, Kerrigan, S, McGucken, A, Prichard, J, Shahrokhabadi, MS, Hilkens, C, Buckley, C, McInnes, IB, Ng, W-F, Goodyear, CS, Teare, D, Filer, A, Siebert, S, Raza, K, Pratt, AG, Baker, KF & Isaacs, JD 2025, 'Clinical predictors of flare and drug-free remission in rheumatoid arthritis: preliminary results from the prospective BIO-FLARE experimental medicine study', BMJ open, vol. 15, e092478. https://doi.org/10.1136/ bmjopen-2024-092478

Lopez-Oliva, I, Chapple, I, Paropkari, A, Saraswat, S, Sharma, P, Serban, S, De Pablo, P, Raza, K, Filer, A, Dietrich, T, Grant, M & Kumar, PS 2025, 'Dysbiosis-mediated inflammation: a pathophysiological link between rheumatoid arthritis and periodontitis', Journal of Clinical Periodontology.

Donada, CA, Theisen, E, Zhang, F, Nathan, A, Fairfield, ML, Rupani, KV, Jones, D, Johannes, KP, Accelerating Medicines Partnership RA/SLE Network, Raychaudhuri, S, Dwyer, DF, Jonsson, AH & Brenner, MB 2025, 'Granzyme K activates the entire complement cascade', Nature, vol. 641, pp. 211–221. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08713-9

Roche Fibroblast Network Consortium 2025, 'Molecular and spatial analysis of tertiary lymphoid structures in Sjogren's syndrome', Nature Communications, vol. 16, no. 1, 5. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-54686-0

Raza, K, Sharma-Oates, A, Padyukov, L, van der Helm-van Mil, AHM, Pratt, AG, Jones, SW, Filer, A, Lord, JM & Duggal, NA 2025, 'Specific features of immune ageing are detected in the earliest stages in rheumatoid arthritis development', EBioMedicine, vol. 119, 105900. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2025.105900

Bolton, C, Mahony, CB, Clay, E, Reis Nisa, P, Lomholt, S, Hackland, A, Chin, PS, Smith, CG, Alexiou, V, Nguyen, HD, Thyagarajan, M, Sheikh, Z, Davis, P, Chippington, S, Compeyrot-Lacassagne, S, Davda, S, Foley, C, Turtsevich, I, Ingledow, B, Kupiec, K, Kelly, J, Hanlon, MM, DiCarlo, E, Jones, LJ, Smith, SL, Eyre, S, Neag, G, Kemble, S, Madhu, R, Palshikar, MG, Korsunsky, I, Gao, C, Tran, M, Dendrou, C, Buckley, CD, Coles, MC, Raza, K, MAPJAG Study Group, Gravallese, E, Filer, A, Wei, K, Al-Abadi, E, Rosser, EC, Wedderburn, LR & Croft, A 2025, 'Synovial tissue atlas in juvenile idiopathic arthritis reveals pathogenic niches associated with disease severity', Science Translational Medicine, vol. 17, no. 805, eadt6050. https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.adt6050

Cope, A, Jasenecova, M, Vasconcelos, J, Filer, A, Raza, K, Qureshi, S, D'Agostino, M-A, McInnes, IB, Isaacs, J, Pratt, AG, Fisher, B, Buckley, CD, Emery, P, Ho, P, Buch, MH, Ciurtin, C, van Schaardenburg, D, Huizinga, TWJ, Toes, R, Georgiou, E, Kelly, J, Murphy, CL, Prevost, AT & APIPPRA Study Investigators 2024, 'Abatacept in individuals at high risk of rheumatoid arthritis (APIPPRA): a randomised, double-blind, multicentre, parallel, placebo-controlled, phase 2b clinical trial', The Lancet. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(23)02649-1

Accelerating Medicines Partnership RA/SLE Network, Faust, HJ, Cheng, TY, Korsunsky, I, Watts, GFM, Gal-Oz, ST, Trim, WV, Kongthong, S, Jonsson, AH, Simmons, DP, Zhang, F, Padera, R, Chubinskaya, S, Wei, K, Raychaudhuri, S, Lynch, L, Moody, DB & Brenner, MB 2024, 'Adipocyte associated glucocorticoid signaling regulates normal fibroblast function which is lost in inflammatory arthritis', Nature Communications, vol. 15, no. 1, 9859. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-52586-x

Thomas, T, Friedrich, M, Rich-Griffin, C, Pohin, M, Agarwal, D, Pakpoor, J, Lee, C, Tandon, R, Rendek, A, Aschenbrenner, D, Jainarayanan, A, Voda, A, Siu, JHY, Sanches-Peres, R, Nee, E, Sathananthan, D, Kotliar, D, Todd, P, Kiourlappou, M, Gartner, L, Ilott, N, Issa, F, Hester, J, Turner, J, Nayar, S, Mackerodt, J, Zhang, F, Jonsson, A, Brenner, M, Raychaudhuri, S, Kulicke, R, Ramsdell, D, Stransky, N, Pagliarini, R, Bielecki, P, Spies, N, Marsden, B, Taylor, S, Wagner, A, Klenerman, P, Walsh, A, Coles, M, Jostins-Dean, L, Powrie, FM, Filer, A, Travis, S, Uhlig, HH, Dendrou, CA & Buckley, CD 2024, 'A longitudinal single-cell atlas of anti-tumour necrosis factor treatment in inflammatory bowel disease', Nature Immunology, vol. 25, no. 11, pp. 2152-2165. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41590-024-01994-8

Bell, RD, Brendel, M, Konnaris, MA, Xiang, J, Otero, M, Fontana, MA, Bai, Z, Krenitsky, DM, Meednu, N, Rangel-Moreno, J, Scheel-Toellner, D, Carr, H, Nayar, S, McMurray, J, DiCarlo, E, Anolik, JH, Donlin, LT, Orange, DE, Kenney, HM, Schwarz, EM, Filer, A, Ivashkiv, LB & Wang, F 2024, 'Automated multi-scale computational pathotyping (AMSCP) of inflamed synovial tissue', Nature Communications, vol. 15, 7503. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-51012-6

Dunlap, G, Wagner, A, Meednu, N, Wang, R, Zhang, F, Ekabe, JC, Jonsson, AH, Sakaue, S, Nathan, A, Bykerk, VP, Donlin, LT, Goodman, SM, Firestein, GS, Boyle, DL, Holers, VM, Moreland, LW, Tabechian, D, Pitzalis, C, Filer, A, Raychaudhuri, S, Brenner, MB, Thakar, J, McDavid, A, Rao, DA, Anolik, JH, Wei, K & Accelerating Medicines Partnership Program: Rheumatoid Arthritis and Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (AMP RA/SLE) Network 2024, 'Clonal associations between lymphocyte subsets and functional states in rheumatoid arthritis synovium', Nature Communications, vol. 15, no. 1, 4991. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-49186-0

Martin, CS, Crastin, A, Sagmeister, MS, Kalirai, MS, Turner, JD, MacDonald, L, Kurowska-Stolarska, M, Scheel-Toellner, D, Taylor, AE, Gilligan, LC, Storbeck, K, Price, M, Gorvin, CM, Filer, A, Mahida, R, Clark, AR, Jones, SW, Raza, K, Hewison, M & Hardy, RS 2024, 'Inflammation Dynamically Regulates Steroid Hormone Metabolism and Action within Macrophages in Rheumatoid Arthritis  ', Journal of Autoimmunity, vol. 147, 103263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaut.2024.103263

Law, C, Wacleche, VS, Cao, Y, Pillai, A, Sowerby, J, Sowerby, B, Horisberger, A, Bracero, S, Skidanova, V, Li, ZJ, Adejoorin, I, Dillon, E, Benque, IJ, Pena Nunez, D, Simmons, DP, Keegan, J, Chen, L, Baker, T, Brohawn, PZ, Al-Mossawi, H, Hao, L-Y, Jones, B, Rao, N, Qu, Y, Alves, S, Jonsson, AH, Shaw, KS, Vleugels, RA, Massarotti, E, Costenbader, KH, Brenner, MB, Lederer, JA, Hultquist, JF, Choi, J, Rao, DA & Accelerating Medicines Partnership RA/SLE Network 2024, 'Interferon subverts an AHR–JUN axis to promote CXCL13+ T cells in lupus', Nature, vol. 631, pp. 857-866. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07627-2

Preprint

Mueller, AA, Zou, AE, Marsh, L-J, Kemble, S, Nayar, S, Watts, GFM, Murphy, CL, Taylor, E, Major, T, Gardner, D, Buckley, CD, Wei, K, Raychaudhuri, S, Korsunsky, I, Filer, A, Croft, AP & Brenner, MB 2025 'Wnt signaling drives stromal inflammation in inflammatory arthritis' bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.06.631510

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

Inflammation in early arthiritis