Prof. Katerina Antoniou, MD, PhD
Greece
Katerina Antoniou is Associate Professor in Respiratory Medicine and Head of the Molecular and Cellular Pneumonology Laboratory at the School of Medicine, University of Crete, Greece. She is the Chair of Public Relationship Committee for the Medical School and was recently elected member of the Executive WASOG committee and Head of the ERS Assembly 12 for Interstitial lung diseases (mandate from September 2021).
Previous appointments: Co-ordinator of the 1.05 ILDs European Respiratory Society (ERS) Group (2014-2017) and ILDs Group of the Hellenic Thoracic Society (HTS, 2011-2017), Secretary of the Assembly 12 of the (ERS) and member of the ERS Science Council. In the Medical School she served as Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Medicine (2015-2017) and was the Co-ordinator & member of Public Relationship Committee of University of Crete (2016-2019).
Through all her posts she emphasised in bridging disciplines from primary to tertiary care. Her main goal is prioritizing patient-centered domains into clinical care and research and improving patients’ quality of life and functional status. Dr Antoniou’s current research focuses on the pathogenesis and treatment of Pulmonary Fibrosis while her laboratory group is evaluating alveolar macrophage phenotypes and function, mitochondrial homeostasis, oxidation status and the inflammasomes with multiple publications in the field. Her purpose is to establish translational biomarkers useful for the diagnosis and disease progression of lung fibrosis and the most recently characterised Progressive Fibrotic Phenotype.
Dr Antoniou has received two ERS Research Fellowships and has been a prominent member of the European ILD research community. Several ERS fellowships have been awarded to PhD students, members of her laboratory group, that have promoted and continued common research interests in collaboration with major institutions such as the Royal Brompton Hospital and Imperial College London.
Dr. Antoniou has authored more than 180 peer-reviewed articles (h-index 36, >4500 citations) on her main research interests in IPF, Sarcoidosis and Autoimmune Diseases. She has an increasing role in the generation of guidelines and taskforce statements. She is a member of ATS/ERS and International guidelines in IPF and PF-ILDs and co-chair of the ERS/EULAR Clinical Practice Guideline in CTD-ILDs.
She also has an active role in the provision of learning in the Respiratory Community. She was involved in the organization of several European and international conferences and seminars. In 2018 she pioneered in organizing the International Conference on Sarcoidosis and Interstitial Lung Diseases (WASOG) Conference in her home town, Heraklion.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, she participated as Chair and Speaker in several Webinars, TV documentaries and newspapers invited articles about the impact of Sars- CoV2 in Chronic Respiratory Diseases. She is part of the ERS Guidelines for COVID-19 and she is co-chairing the Follow-up ERS Statement about COVID-19. She also co-chaired several international and European Webinars for Covid-19 several national Societies from Europe, USA and Latin America, with more than 700 participants from 20 countries.
