Professor Paul Telfer, DM, MA, BM, BCh, FRCP, FRCPath

Profile

Paul Telfer is clinical lead for haemoglobinopathy services at Bart’s Health NHS Trust and for the Haemoglobinopathy Co-ordinating Centres for East London and Essex (Sickle) and East London, Essex, South East London and South East England (Thalassaemia). He is a committee member of the Clinical Advisory Group for National Specialist Commissioning in Haemoglobinopathies, the National Haemoglobinopathy Panel, and the Steering Group of the National Sickle Cell and Thalassaemia Screening Programmes. He has co-authored national guidelines for management of children and adults with sickle cell disease, and for thalassaemia and is co-author of ‘Sickle Cell Disease in Clinical Practice’ published by Springer. He is chief investigator for the SCAPE trial (Sickle Cell Analgesia Protocol Evaluation), the East London Newborn Sickle Cell Cohort Study. He has been PI for numerous commercial studies for new therapies for SCD and thalassaemia, and published widely on clinical and laboratory studies in SCD and thalassaemia.

Research

Research Interests:

• Long-term observational studies of cohorts of patients to study clinical out-comes, risk factors for disease progression and response to therapies in Sickle Cell Disease and thalassaemia
• Collaboration with pharmaceutical companies in developing new therapies for sickle cell disease and thalassaemia, including gene therapy. Participation in early and late phase clinical trials
• Developing optimal approaches to acute pain management in Sickle Cell Dis-ease, by evaluating of new routes of administration and protocols for delivery of analgesia in clinical trial and observational research setting
• Developing research links with Bangladesh to study epidemiology, prevention and management of thalassaemia
• Laboratory-based research in collaboration with other research groups at QMUL to study haematopoietic stem cell health in SCD and thalassaemia
• Collaboration with patient organizations and patient research groups (eg elev-en.health) to study day by day experience of disease and identify novel technology for continuous evaluate of symptoms and vital signs

Publications

Telfer P, Coen P, Chakravorty S, Wilkey O, Evans J, Newell H, Smalling B, Amos R, Stephens A, Rogers D, Kirkham F. Clinical outcomes in children with sickle cell disease living in England: a neonatal cohort in East London. Haematologica. 2007 Jul;92(7):905-12.

Elander J, Bij D, Kapadi R, Schofield MB, Osias A, Khalid N, Kaya B, Telfer P. Development and validation of the Satisfaction with Treatment for Pain Questionnaire (STPQ) among patients with sickle cell disease. Br J Haematol. 2019 Br J Haematol. 2019 Oct;187(1):105-116. PMID: 31230352.

Vichinsky E, Hoppe CC, Ataga KI, Ware RE, Nduba V, El-Beshlawy A, Hassab H, Achebe MM, Alkindi S, Brown RC, Diuguid DL, Telfer P, Tsitsikas DA, Elghandour A, Gordeuk VR, Kanter J, Abboud MR, Lehrer-Graiwer J, Tonda M, Intondi A, Tong B, Howard J; HOPE Trial Investigators. A Phase 3 Randomized Trial of Voxelotor in Sickle Cell Disease. N Engl J Med. 2019 Aug 8;381(6):509-519.

Kountouris P, Michailidou K, Christou S, Hadjigavriel M, Sitarou M, Kolnagou A, Klean-thous M, Telfer P. Effect of HBB genotype on survival in a cohort of transfusion-dependent thalassemia patients in Cyprus. Haematologica. 2021 Sep 1;106(9):2458-2468.
PMID: 32732363

Telfer P, Bestwick J, Elander J, et al. A non-injected opioid analgesia protocol for acute pain crisis in adolescents and adults with sickle cell disease. British Journal of Pain. Au-gust 2021. doi:10.1177/20494637211033814