Biography
Laura Coates studied medicine at the University of Liverpool before moving to Yorkshire for her further clinical training. She completed her PhD at the University of Leeds in the Leeds Institute of Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Medicine. Within this she developed a new outcome measure (Minimal Disease Activity (MDA) criteria) and established a large RCT testing these in a treat-to-target approach in psoriatic arthritis (PsA). The Tight Control of PsA trial, published in the Lancet, transformed the European Society recommendations for PsA to include “treatment should be aimed at reaching the target of remission or, alternatively, minimal/low disease activity, by regular monitoring and appropriate adjustment of therapy”. She was awarded one of eight UK Scopus Young Investigator Awards in 2011 and a University of Leeds Women of Achievement Award in 2012.
She completed her rheumatology training in Yorkshire as an NIHR Clinical Lecturer including a year-long fellowship with Professor Chris Ritchlin as an Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester Medical Centre in Rochester, New York. She moved to Oxford in 2017 with an NIHR Clinician Scientist Fellowship, to develop a national PsA inception cohort which has supported two RCTs of novel treatment strategies.
Dr Coates is now an NIHR Research Professor, the first in rheumatology, as well as being the academic departmental lead for Rheumatology and Metabolic Bone at the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences and leading the Planned Care sub-theme of the current Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) musculoskeletal theme. In her clinical role, she also works as an honorary Consultant Rheumatologist at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, OUH. In this role, she leads the psoriatic arthritis service and supports the early arthritis service.
Dr Coates’s research is clinical and focuses on psoriatic arthritis and the spondyloarthritides including early diagnosis of PsA, development of PsA specific and validated outcome measures, optimal treatment pathways and strategies in PsA. Given the impact of a delay in PsA diagnosis, she leads multiple studies assessing screening questionnaires and is working with international researchers looking into prevention of PsA by targeting an at-risk population with psoriasis. She co-leads PsA prevention studies within the European HIPPOCRATES consortium and development of smartphone apps to predict arthritis in the iPROLEPSIS consortium with links to American programmes and collaborations investigating patient opinions on prevention.
Dr Coates has a particular interest in optimal and novel trial design. She is now developing a digitally-enabled multi-centre observational psoriatic arthritis cohort aiming to collect data and support embedded trials in routine NHS clinics. She is currently chief investigator on two UK multi-centre RCTs: The OPTIMISE trial aiming to identify peripheral blood biomarkers that predict response to biologic therapy in PsA and the TaILOR study aiming to investigate the impact of patient-initated follow-up (PIFU) for inflammatory arthritis in the UK. In 2024, she became lead for the Experimental Medicine and Rheumatology spoke of the Oxford Clinical Trials Research Unit (OCTRU). She is lead for patient and public involvement (PPI) for the department since 2019, establishing a new Oxford Patient Engagement Network in 2020. This supports PPI integration across NDORMS, running monthly Meet the Researcher events for the public, outreach activities and annual PhD student training attracting students from across the University. She also led the EULAR Gender Equity in Academic Rheumatology taskforce from 2019-2022 developing recommendations to support academic careers and am continuing this work by mentoring Dr Latika Gupta as she leads a global gender equity taskforce.
She works hard to recruit and support the next generation of researchers. All of her trials support the NIHR Associate PI scheme and she runs special study modules for medical students and supervises academic trainees at all levels. In collaboration with experts at the Kennedy Institute for Rheumatology, Big Data Institute, NDORMS Big Data group, National Institute for Health, she currently supervises trainees with diverse projects including:
- Understanding different immunophenotypes in PsA and prediction of response to methotrexate
- “big data” epidemiology looking at prediction of PsA and tolerability of arthritis medications
- Using accelerometer data to monitor disease activity and disease states
- Investigating liver disease in PsA and how this is impacted by arthritis treatments
- Characterizing the impact of time-restricted eating in psoriatic disease by identifying and characterizing immunometabolic changes
- Understanding the impact of sex hormones in inflammatory diseases like psoriasis
- Developing AI models for automated radiograph scoring in inflammatory arthritis
- Predicting long-term outcomes in people with psoriasis who achieve disease control on systemic therapy
Positions:
- NIHR Research Professor, Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences
- Honorary Consultant in Rheumatology, Oxford University Hospitals
Subjects:
- Psoriatic arthritis and Psoriasis
- Treatment strategy
- Clinical trial design
- Outcome measure development
Positions
- Supernumerary Fellow in Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences
Subjects
- Clinical Medicine
