Jilles Fermont, graduate student at Caius, recently received the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Young Scientist award to present on the value of novel biomarkers in predicting mortality in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at the ERS International Conference 2018 in Paris. Earlier this year, Jilles was also the recipient of an America Thoracic Society (ATS) 2018 Student Scholarship to present his work on cardiovascular disease incidence in COPD at the ATS International Conference 2018 in San Diego. These conferences are the largest in pulmonary and critical care medicine bringing together experts and key opinion leaders in the field to present, discuss and learn about the latest research findings.

The overall aim of his research is to identify and evaluate the predictive value of existing and novel biomarkers for COPD, to explore these inter-relationships and determine if and how these markers can predict the longer-term clinical outcomes, as currently no individual biomarker has been shown to reliably identify or predict clinical outcomes.

Alongside his PhD he works on the economics and health policy aspects related to precision medicine, in particular the cost-effectiveness and budget impact of next-generation sequencing technologies, and preauthorisation of medical testing.

Jilles is a GSK Scholar and research student for a PhD in medicine at the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit (CEU) and Experimental Medicine & Immunotherapeutics (EMIT) group, and a visiting Fellow at Harvard University.