Sir Gordon William Duff, FRCP, FMedSci, FRSE (born 27 December 1947) is a British medical scientist and academic.
[1][2] He undertook postgraduate research in neuropharmacology at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, University of London, completing his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in 1980.
[3] Following postgraduate training at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, he held junior faculty posts at Yale Medical School (Infectious Diseases and Pathology department), and the Howard Hughes Institute of Molecular Immunology at Yale.
Sir Gordon is now President of the "United In Diversity Foundation", which is focused on implementing the UN's Sustainable Development Goals; a Senior Research Fellow of Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre (Oxford Medical School), co-founder of Sitokine Ltd, and Chair of the International Scientific Advisory Board of Silence Therapeutics.
[13][14] In the 2007 New Year Honours, he was appointed a Knight Bachelor, and therefore granted the title Sir, "for services to Public Health".
[15] This was in recognition of his inquiry into, and report on, the conduct of a Theralizumab clinical trial at Northwick Park Hospital in March 2006.
His identification of the term “cytokine storm” has led to its widespread use when discussing adverse side-effects of influenza-like diseases including COVID-19.
He was an advisor on biological medicines to the EU, and was chair of the UK's Scientific Pandemic Influenza (SPI) Advisory Committee from 2006-2010.
From 2015 to 2019, Sir Gordon was chair of the UK's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) during the launch of the new Pirbright Institute for Animal Health.