Mark Toshner MD

Mark Toshner is the Director of the Heart and Lung Research Institute NIHR Clinical Research Facility, an Associate Professor in Respiratory Medicine and an honorary consultant in Royal Papworth Hospital, where he specialises in pulmonary vascular disease. Dr Toshner established the concept of using blood-derived endothelial cells from patients to define endothelial dysfunction in PAH during his time on a BHF Training Fellowship and subsequent Wellcome/NIHR Lecturership. This work led directly to new therapies targeting the endothelial BMPR2 pathway being developed by a spinout biotechnology company (MorphogenIX) and the first therapy successful in phase 3 studies targeting the BMPR2 pathway (Sotatercept).

Dr Toshner is an active clinician, working predominantly in patients with pulmonary hypertension and chronic thromboembolic disease. He is the Director of the national pulmonary hypertension experimental medicine network, UniPHy, and his research group is focused on improving outcomes for patients with pulmonary hypertension using adaptive, decentralised and digital techniques in trial design coupled to investigator-driven networks to improve efficiency of drug validation in early phase trials. He was Chief-Investigator for the first UK pulmonary hypertension trial to recruit from all specialist centres within the UK and has been a Chief-Investigator, Co-Investigator, or Sub-Investigator in 22 phase 2-3 clinical trials, including four therapies and a vaccine that have achieved marketing authorisation. He is Joint Chief-Investigator for HEAL-COVID, the world’s first decentralised therapeutic platform trial for the post-hospital phase of COVID-19.