Professor Gideon Lack
Consultant in Allergy and Immunology
Gideon Lack is Professor of Paediatric Allergy at King’s College London and a member of the MRC-Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma.
Having completed his medical degree at The University of Oxford (Lincoln College), Professor Lack then completed senior house office appointments at the John Radcliffe in Oxford. He spent four years training as a paediatrician in New York and a further four years specialising in Paediatric Allergy & Immunology in Denver, Colorado. He then became Consultant in Paediatric Allergy at St Mary’s Hospital in London in 1995 after his work in Bristol as a Lecturer in Paediatrics.
Professor Lack led the Department of Paediatric Allergy and Immunology at St Mary’s Hospital, London for 12 years and became Professor of Paediatric Allergy and Immunology at Imperial College London in 2005. He joined King’s College London in 2006 as Professor of Paediatric Allergy and he is currently Head of the Children’s Allergy Service at ST Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. In recognition for his contributions to clinical and academic medicine, he was elected as Fellow to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2019.
Alongside this, Professor Lack has established two of the nation’s paediatric allergy centres and is a co-founder of the Allergy Academy at King’s College London. He is also a Director of the Centre of Excellence course for international students and a Consultant to the Sean Parker Allergy Centre and Stanford University. Furthermore, he is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology as well as the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology in Practice. On the world-stage, Profesor Lack is the Secretary to the Food Allergy Section of the World Allergy Organisation. In 2010, Professor Lack was awarded the William Frankland Excellence in Allergy Award by the British Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
His research has focused on severe childhood asthma, peanut allergy, and new strategies to prevent and treat food allergies, eczema, asthma, and hay fever in children and adults. His clinical expertise includes allergic asthma, anaphylaxis, and desensitising vaccines to treat hay fever and other allergies. He is the Principle Investigator on the LEAP (Learning Early About Peanut allergy) and EAT (Enquiring About Tolerance) studies, which are taking place at the Evelina Children’s Hospital.
In 2015, The LEAP Study received the prestigious international David Sackett Clinical Trial of the Year Award. The Society for Clinical Trials praised The LEAP Study for, “the randomized clinical trial published in the previous year that best fulfils the following standards: improves the lot of humankind; provides the basis for a substantial, beneficial change in health care; reflects expertise in subject matter, excellence in methodology, and concern for study participants; overcomes obstacles in implementation; presentation of its design, execution, and results is a model of clarity and intellectual soundness.”
