Djukanovic, Professor Ratko

MD, DM, FRCP

Speciality

Respiratory Medicine

Training and Education

Professor Djukanovic studied medicine in Switzerland and former Yugoslavia where he also completed his specialist training. He undertook postgraduate training in Southampton and continued as a Senior Clinical Research Fellow funded by the Medical Research Council. He was appointed as a Consultant Physician in Southampton in 1996 as a Specialist in General and Respiratory Medicine.

Experience

Professor Djukanovic has worked for Southampton University Hospitals Trust since September 1996. He has a broad expertise in respiratory as well as general medicine, runs a specialist clinic to manage difficult airways disease (asthma, COPD, bronchiectasis and chronic cough). With Dr Coleman, a gastroenterologist, and Mr Jamie Kelly, an upper gastrointestinal surgeon, he has set up a specialist  service to investigate difficult cases of chronic cough, providing a tertiary referral service for a large region in South England.

Professor Djukanovic is the Professor of Respiratory Medicine at Southampton University School of Medicine and Director of the NIHR Respiratory Biomedical Research Unit, a prestigious research facility working to identify new targets for treatment of lung disease and for developing and testing of new drugs and diagnostics. Together with two university colleagues, he has founded a research company, Synairgen, to develop drugs for asthma and COPD; this company has so far raised £16 million of funding for its clinical programme

Key achievements

Professor Djukanovic has more than 130 publications in peer reviewed journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, Journal of Immunology and respiratory specialist journals. He has generated more than £36 million in research grant income.  He is an internationally recognised expert in asthma and COPD and is regularly invited to give keynote lectures at international meeting. His biggest achievement for Southampton University Hospitals Trust has been the award of a NIHR Biomedical Research Unit which attracted more than £6 million and is enabling the building of a £10 million research unit.

Key awards and prizes

Professor Djukanovic was awarded the prestigious  Pharmacia Allergy Research Foundation Award in 1993. He has been a visiting Professor at several Universities.

Research

Professor Djukanovic heads the Inflammatory Cell Biology group which aims to improve understanding of immune responses to environmental allergens and viruses, with the view of identifying new targets for therapy of chronic airways diseases and providing a valid tool that enables testing of new drugs using human models composed of lung tissue taken from patient volunteers. The team consists of two Senior Lecturers (one of whom holds a prestigious Clinician Scientist Fellowship), three pos-doctoral scientists, two clinical research fellows (one of whom holds a prestigious Wellcome Trust Academic Training Fellowship) and two PhD students. The team has developed an explant model which uses lung tissue donated by patient volunteers which can be exposed in the laboratory to relevant stimuli that play a role in airways inflammation. This model has been used successfully to provide valuable evidence for the efficacy of new drugs that prevent recruitment of inflammatory cells into the lungs or prevent viruses from causing harm to the airways.

Professor Djukanovic also heads a multi-disciplinary team whose objective is to find valuable biomarkers of airways diseases, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This work has been funded previously by the US funding body, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and currently supported by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) grant to study severe asthma (€23 million) which involves a consortium of academic centres and pharmaceutical companies in a programme led by the Southampton NIHR Respiratory BRU, the Respiratory BRU at the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI) in London and the University of Amsterdam.

Publications (since 2006)

Rytila P, Plataki M, Bucchieri F, Uddin M, Djukanovic R. Airway neutrophilia in COPD is not associated with increased neutrophilia survival. Eur Respir J 2006; 28(6):1163-9.

Nicholas B, Skipp P, Mould R, Rennard S, Davies DE, O’Connor CD, Djukanovic R. Shotgun proteomic analysis of human induced sputum. Proteomics. Proteomics. 2006; 6: 4390-401.

Jarjour NN, Wilson SJ, Koenig SM, Laviolette M, Moore WC, Davis WB, Doherty DE, Hamid Q, Israel E, Kavuru MS, Ramsdell JW, Tashkin DP, Reilly DS, Yancey SW, Edwards LD, Stauffer JL, Dorinsky PM, Djukanovic R. Control of Airway Inflammation Maintained at a Lower Steroid Dose with Fluticasone Propionate/Salmeterol 100/50mcg. J Allergy Clin Immunol 2006; 118: 44-52.

Pierrou S, Broberg P, O’Donnell R, Pawłowski K, Virtala R, Lindqvist E, Richter A, Wilson S, Angco G, Möller S, Bergstrand H, Koopmann W, Wieslander E, Strömstedt P-E, Holgate ST, Davies DE, Lund H, Djukanovic R. Expression of genes involved in oxidative stress responses in airway epithelial cells of COPD smokers. Am J Respir Crit Care Med.2007;175:577-86.

Yoshikawa T, Dent G, Ward J, Angco G, Nong G, Hirata K, Djukanovic R. Impaired neutrophil chemotaxis in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Am J Respir Crit Care Med 2006; 2004;169:1110-7.

Vijayanand P, Seumois G, Pickard C, Powell R, Angco G, Sammut D, Gadola SD, Friedmann P, Djukanovic R. Invariant NKT cells in asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. N Engl J. Med, 2007; 356; 1410-1422.

Uddin M, Seumois G, Lau LC, Rytila P, Davies DE, Djukanovic R Enhancement of neutrophil function by the bronchial epithelium stimulated by epidermal growth factor. Eur Respir J. 2008; 31: 714-24.

Louhelainen N, Rytilä P, Haahtela T, Kinnula VL, Djukanović R. Persistence of oxidant and protease burden in the airways after smoking cessation BMC Pulm Med. 2009; 9:25.

Nicholas BL, Skipp P, Barton S, Singh D, Bagmane D, Mould R, Angco G, Ward J, Guha-Niyogi B, Wilson S, Howarth P, Davies DE, Rennard S, O'Connor CD, Djukanovic R. Identification of Lipocalin and Apolipoprotein A1 as Biomarkers of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2010 Jan 28. [Epub ahead of print]

Louis R, Djukanovic R. Is the neutrophil a worthy target in severe asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease? Clin Exp Allergy 2006; 36: 563-567.

O’Donnell R, Wilson SJ, Djukanovic R. Inflammatory cells in the airways in COPD. Thorax. 2006;61:448-54.

Djukanovic R, Gadola S. Virus infection, asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. N Engl J Med. 2008 Nov 6;359(19):2062-4.

Beasley R, Martinez FD, Hackshaw A, Rabe KF, Sterk PJ, Djukanovic R. Safety of long-acting beta-agonists: urgent need to clear the air remains. Eur Respir J. 2009 Jan;33(1):3-5.

Nicholas BL, O'Connor CD, Djukanovic R. From proteomics to prescription-the search for COPD biomarkers.COPD. 2009 Aug;6(4):298-303.

Nicholas B, Djukanović R. Induced sputum: a window to lung pathology. Biochem Soc Trans. 2009 Aug;37(Pt 4):868-72.

Nicholas BL, Skipp P, Barton S, Singh D, Bagmane D, Mould R, Angco G, Ward J, Guha-Niyogi B, Wilson S, Howarth P, Davies DE, Rennard S, O'Connor CD, Djukanovic R. Identification of Lipocalin and Apolipoprotein A1 as Biomarkers of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2010 May 15;181(10):1049-60.

Vijayanand P, Durkin K, Hartmann G, Morjaria J, Seumois G, Staples KJ, Hall D, Bessant C, Bartholomew M, Howarth PH, Friedmann PS, Djukanovic R. Chemokine receptor 4 plays a key role in T cell recruitment into the airways of asthmatic patients. J Immunol. 2010 Apr 15;184(8):4568-74.