Thomas Dörner is a board certified Rheumatologist and Professor of Rheumatology and Hemostaseology at Charité University Hospitals, Berlin, and group leader at the German Research Center of Rheumatology, Berlin (DRFZ). He qualified in medicine in 1990 at Charité University Hospitals, Berlin, and received his board certification in internal medicine in 1995 before undertaking a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, where he researched delineating molecular aspects of the B-cell receptor gene usage in autoimmune diseases.

Professor Dörner has received a number of international and national awards, including the Senior Scholar Award of the American College of Rheumatology, the H Schultze Award of the German League Against Rheumatism, Randy Fischer Prize for Excellence in flow cytometry and the Schoen Award of the German Society of Rheumatology.

Professor Dörner has served as a member of Editorial Boards of leading journals in rheumatology and immunology, including Arthritis & Rheumatism, Arthritis Research & Therapy, Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, Global Arthritis Research Network (GARN), Current Reviews in Rheumatology, the Brazilian Journal of Rheumatology, the European Journal of Immunology, Lupus Science & Medicine, and Rheumatology Reviews.

Professor Dörner has led various clinical trials of rheumatic diseases, including systemic lupus erythematosus, Sjögren’s syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis and seronegative spondyloarthropathies. His research interests focus on the characterisation of disturbances of humoral autoimmunity and abnormalities of B cell subsets in the blood versus tissue (lupus, neonatal lupus syndromes, Sjögren’s syndrome), exploring innovative therapeutic approaches with particular focus on B-cell directed therapy as well as improving diagnostic tools in autoimmune diseases.