He’s a great Fellow
Professor Ken Baillie is honoured by the Royal Society Edinburgh
PROFESSOR Ken Baillie, Professor of Experimental Medicine, University of Edinburgh, is one of the 80 new fellows named by the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE). His research into finding an effective treatment for Covid-19 is a natural extension of all of his work of the last decade looking at genetics as a way to treat life-threatening conditions.
Baillie, who is also a consultant in the intensive care unit at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, said: “It is a great honour and I am absolutely delighted to be appointed a Fellow. The RSE has a long history of impacting the academic and cultural life of Scotland and it will give me the opportunity to contribute to that.
“We’re using genetics to try and find better ways to treat critical illness - all the diseases that we see in intensive care. During Covid-19, all of that has been accelerated, and we’ve made some discoveries that are quite important.
“Because our study was already running, we were able, within five months of the outbreak hitting the shores of the UK, to find four human genes associated with severe disease, and one of them pointed to a particular treatment to suppress the immune system in a particular way. It was included in the recovery trial - the UK’s nationwide trial of treatments for Covid and it is effective.
“Our approach is to work out ways to treat your own immune system. It sounds quite counter-intuitive, but the patients we see in intensive care with Covid-19 - and actually almost certainly with other problems like sepsis, or even flu - a big part of why they’re sick is that the infection has somehow triggered their immune system to start damaging their own organs like their lungs.
“So taking the infection away is a good way to stop that. We’ve been developing treatments to stop your immune system from destroying your organs, without switching it off completely and allowing the infection to run riot.
“At the beginning we just had to guess what treatment might be effective, but it feels less like guesswork with each passing month and with new data coming forward.”
The RSE already has around 1,700 Fellows who are some of the greatest thinkers and researchers in Scotland today, and the new group will add to its work addressing many contemporary issues.
The list also includes singer songwriter and former member of the band, Eurythmics,
Annie Lennox, OBE, Mark Logan the former Skyscanner Chief Operating Officer and Professor Marc Turner Director of the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service.