Felix Woodhead MD PhD is a pulmonologist specializing in the management of interstitial lung diseases (ILD). He was appointed senior medical director at Avalyn in February 2022.
Felix studied medicine at Cambridge University and did postgraduate medical training at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London, as well as in the East of England, including Papworth Hospital in Cambridge. He was awarded a Ph.D. from Imperial College London where he studied the association of autoantibodies in ILD under the supervision of Professor Athol Wells.
Felix was appointed as a consultant respiratory physician (equivalent to a US attending pulmonologist) in 2010, moving to Glenfield Hospital in Leicester in 2014. This period encompassed the emergence of the use of antifibrotic medication for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and he was involved in the development of specific ILD services in the English Midlands. He served for three years as the chair of the British Thoracic Society ILD specialty advisory group. He also developed an interest in clinical trials being local investigator for a number of commercial trials, as well as being UK chief investigator of the TRAIL1 randomized controlled trial of oral pirfenidone for ILD associated with rheumatoid arthritis. He continues to hold an honorary contract at Glenfield and to do ILD clinics there, and is passionate about using his clinical and research expertise to develop safer and more effective treatments for ILD and other respiratory diseases currently lacking in good treatments.