UK & EU Medical Advisors
Professor Hanne Albert PT MSc PhD
Professor Hanne Albert is a leading expert on lumbar disc herniation and Modic changes. In 2013, she published a ground-breaking paper in the European Spine Journal which described a double-blind, placebo-controlled, and randomised clinical trial with 162 patients which demonstrated that an oral antibiotic treatment offered a curative treatment for these chronic low back pain patients by removing the bacterial infection. Professor Albert was awarded the prestigious German Award for Pain Research and Contribution to Medicine for this work and other studies in this space in 2017.
Professor Albert qualified as a physiotherapist and later gained a Masters of Public Health from the Nordic School of Public Health in Gothenburg, Sweden, and a Ph.D. from the University of Southern Denmark in 2004. She worked with Professor Manniche at the University of Southern Denmark from 2000 to 2013, and has been the medical director of the Modic Clinic in Odense, Denmark, since 2013. She was appointed Professor at Rush University in Chicago in February 2023.
Professor Albert is a founding member of Persica Pharmaceuticals.
Professor Claus Manniche MD, Dr. Med
Professor Claus Manniche is one of the world’s leading experts on chronic low back pain. In 1988, he published the results of a clinical trial in The Lancet demonstrating the efficacy of exercise therapy in treating chronic low back pain. This study led to a paradigm shift in the understanding of low back pain and active spine rehabilitation, and its principles still underpin the standard of care for chronic low back pain today. He also developed a Low Back Pain Rating Scale which is still used in research projects around the world.
Professor Manniche graduated from the University of Copenhagen in 1982 with a degree in medicine and gained his license to practice in 1985. After gaining a law degree from the same university in 1988, Professor Manniche concentrated on the field of back pain and rheumatology, becoming a specialist in rheumatology in 1994. He was appointed as Professor and Director of the Spine Center of Southern Denmark in 1998.
Professor Manniche is a founding member of Persica Pharmaceuticals.
Dr Preben Joffe
Dr Preben Joffe completed his medical degree at the University of Copenhagen in 1983 and his post-graduate studies led him to becoming a Consultant in Nephrology & Internal Medicine.
Presently Dr. Joffe is Medical Director and owner of PlasmoHeal ApS, a public health focused company, as well as being part time consultant for the Niels Due Jensen’s foundation to support transplantation of Danish kidney patients in the US. His knowledge within medical governance stems from the time of building his first company to the level of an ISO certification and was continued via a part-time job at SOS international as Chief Physician, Medical Governance until 2020.
Moreover, Dr Joffe has knowledge in start-ups within the medical world with a view to selling these to the right party. Thus, he managed to start two different companies within the medical field and successively sold the first one to a global leading partner in 2007 followed by selling his second start-up to a French listed company in 2022.
Dr Michael Rud Lassen
Dr Michael Rud Lassen completed his medical studies at the University of Copenhagen in 1982 and went on to become a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon. He was the Chairman of the Clinical Trials Unit at the University of Copenhagen from 2002-11 and Chairman of the Spine Section, Orthopaedic Department at Zealand Hospital from 2016. More than 250,000 patients have been included in clinical trials that Michael has participated in.
Peter Lambert BSc PhD DSc
Peter Lambert is Emeritus Professor of Microbial Chemistry in Health and Life Sciences at Aston University, Birmingham, UK. He worked as Section Head of Microbial Biochemistry at Glaxo Group Research, where he was engaged in the search for novel antibiotics. At Aston University he
was part of the clinical research team that first suggested that the inflammation seen around the nerve root in patients with sciatica may be caused by microbial infection (Stirling et al, The Lancet 2001). He then worked with Professor Claus Manniche and Dr Hanne Albert on the culture and characterisation of bacteria from disc material recovered from patients with Modic 1 changes. This work provided strong evidence for an association between Modic type 1 changes in disc vertebrae and infection with bacteria, especially Cutibacterium acnes.
Dr John Tanner MBBS BSc FFSEM DM-SMed DSMSA
Dr John Tanner is a Musculoskeletal / Sports Physician and Medical Osteopath having trained first as a GP at the Royal London Hospital. Dr Tanner developed the Oving Clinic, a specialist centre for musculoskeletal medicine and sports injury, where he offers treatment for all types of sports injuries including minimally invasive spine interventions. He also instructs for the Spine Intervention Society on these techniques. Dr Tanner has a special interest in chronic musculoskeletal and spinal pain, interventional pain relief techniques and psychological management.