Stanford University
Showing 21-30 of 44 Results
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Tobias Lanz
Assistant Professor of Medicine (Immunology and Rheumatology)
BioTobias Lanz, MD is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Immunity, Transplantation, and Infection and the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford. His research focuses on B cell biology in neuroimmunological diseases and rheumatic diseases with neurological manifestations. He uses high-throughput screening technologies, and methods from structural and cell biology to identify new autoantigens and to understand how certain self-reactive B cells escape tolerance mechanisms. He is particularly interested in molecular mechanisms that explain the association between Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) and autoimmunity.
Tobias went to medical school at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, Germany and at the University College of London. He wrote his MD thesis at Dr. Michael Platten's laboratory at the Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research in Tübingen, Germany before joining Dr. Lawrence Steinman’s neuroimmunological laboratory at Stanford as a research scholar. After medical school he pursued his scientific and clinical training at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the Department of Neurology at the University Hospital in Heidelberg, Germany. In 2015 he joined Dr. William Robinson’s lab at Stanford, where he investigated environmental triggers of autoimmunity, including viruses and milk consumption. In his most recent work, he characterized the B cell repertoire in the spinal fluid of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and identified molecular mimicry between EBV EBNA1 and the glial cellular adhesion molecule GlialCAM as a driver of neuroinflammation (Lanz et al., Nature, 2022). His long term objective is to leverage these newly discovered mechanistic insights to develop next-generation biomarkers and therapeutics for autoimmune diseases. -
Janice Lin
Clinical Assistant Professor, Medicine - Immunology & Rheumatology
BioDr. Lin specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of rheumatologic conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, myositis, gout, and seronegative spondyloarthropathies. She received additional training in autoimmune skin diseases and has a special clinical and research interest for psoriasis/psoriatic arthritis, dermatomyositis, cutaneous lupus/systemic lupus. She leads a combined rheumatology-dermatology clinic with Dr. Matthew Lewis in the dermatology department to take care patients collaboratively. Dr. Lin is a graduate of USSONAR (Ultrasound School of North American Rheumatologists) program and performs diagnostic musculoskeletal ultrasound evaluation and interventions. In addition to her clinical work, she leads the quality improvement effort for the division and her most recent projects are focused on patient-reported outcome in rheumatoid arthritis and vaccinations for patients in the rheumatology clinic.
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Kate Lorig
Professor (Research) of Medicine (Immunology and Rheumatology), Emerita
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsCommunity based psycoeducational intervention studies of disease self management for people with chronic diseases. arthritis, lung diseases, heart disease AIDs, low back pain and diabetes. Programs and studies in Spanish and English. Interventions are in small groups, mailed or on the Internet.
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Eric Meffre
Professor of Medicine (Immunology and Rheumatology)
BioDr. Meffre obtained his PhD in Immunology from the Université d’Aix-Marseille in France before he moved to the USA as a postdoc fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Michel Nussenzweig at The Rockefeller University in New York City. He became an assistant professor at Cornell University in 2003 before being recruited at Yale University as associate professor in 2009. He was tenured at Yale in 2014 before he joined the Department of Medicine/Division of Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford University as a tenured full professor in 2022.
Dr. Meffre’s work focuses on the etiology of autoimmune syndromes and the roles played by B cells in these diseases. His group characterized the abnormal selection of developing autoreactive B cells in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), type 1 diabetes (T1D), multiple sclerosis (MS) and Sjögren’s syndrome, resulting in large numbers of autoreactive naïve B cells accumulating in the patient’s blood. Hence, these autoreactive B cells may present self-antigens to T cells and initiate autoimmune diseases. These early B cell tolerance defects are likely primary to these autoimmune diseases and may result from genetic factors such as the 1858T PTPN22 allele that segregates with RA, SLE and T1D and correlate with an impaired removal of developing autoreactive B cells.
His research goals also consist in characterizing the molecules and pathways involved in the establishment of B cell tolerance and the removal of developing autoreactive B cells generated by random V(D)J recombination through the investigation of rare patients with primary immunodeficiency (PID) enrolled through an international network. Alteration of B cell receptor (BCR) or Toll-like receptor (TLR) signaling in PID patients results in a defective central B cell tolerance and a failure to counterselect developing autoreactive B cells in the bone marrow. In contrast, functional and suppressive regulatory T cells play a key role in preventing the accumulation of autoreactive clones in the mature naïve B cell compartment. The recent development of humanized mouse models recapitulating early B cell tolerance checkpoints and their defects in autoimmune settings allow further in-depth investigation of tolerance mechanisms and the development of novel approaches to restore defective central and peripheral B cell tolerance checkpoints and thwart autoimmunity. -
Alisa Mueller, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Medicine (Immunology and Rheumatology)
BioDr. Mueller is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology. As a physician-scientist, she leads a research laboratory investigating mechanisms that drive stromal pathology in rheumatoid arthritis and other chronic inflammatory conditions. Utilizing innovative techniques in immunology, genomics, and regenerative medicine, she and her team aim to develop novel therapeutic approaches to combat autoimmune diseases.
Dr. Mueller earned her MD and PhD degrees at Stanford University as part of the Medical Scientist Training Program where she investigated mechanisms regulating a mesenchymal progenitor population in skeletal muscle that mediates both healthy tissue regeneration and pathologic fibrosis. During her training, she was awarded predoctoral grants from the NIH National Institute on Aging and the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine. Her studies culminated in a first-author publication in Nature and co-authorship on publications in Cell and Nature Communications. Subsequently, she pursued medicine residency and rheumatology fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School where she explored mechanisms driving synovial fibroblast pathogenicity in rheumatoid arthritis. Her work led to the identification of non-canonical Wnt signaling as a critical mediator of RA synovial fibroblast inflammatory activation as well as the development of functional genomic screens to elucidate a broad set of novel therapeutic targets in inflammatory fibroblasts. Moreover, she has also led high-dimensional immunoprofiling studies to reveal underlying immune aberrations in patients with systemic sclerosis and elucidate biologic mechanisms catalyzing disease in patients with longstanding immune-related disorders of unknown etiology in partnership with the Undiagnosed Diseases Network. During her fellowship and instructorship, she received a Distinguished Fellow Award from the American College of Rheumatology as well as grants including the NIH NIAMS Mentored Clinical Scientist Research Career Development Award (K08), Rheumatology Research Foundation Scientist Development Award with the Malawista Endowment Distinction, Hearst Young Investigator Award, and Innovation Evergreen Fund Award. Her work has resulted in co-first author publications in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Cell Reports Medicine, and ACR Open Rheumatology as well as as co-authorship on publications in Lancet Rheumatology and the New England Journal of Medicine.
In addition to her scientific endeavors, Dr. Mueller is also dedicated to providing high quality clinical care and education. She serves as an attending physician specializing in rheumatology where she mentors trainees in outpatient and inpatient settings and provides educational lectures. With an interdisciplinary team, she developed an interactive medical case on neurologic manifestations of lupus which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. She was awarded an Arnold Dunne Award for Compassion and Dedication to Patient Care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. By pursuing basic and translational research alongside clinical care, Dr. Mueller and her team strive to uncover basic mechanisms regulating stromal biology in autoimmune and inflammatory disease development and to create diagnostic strategies and targeted therapeutics that will benefit patients who do not respond to conventional therapies. -
Quan Dong Nguyen, MD, MSc
Professor of Ophthalmology and, by courtesy, of Pediatrics and of Medicine (Immunology & Rheumatology)
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsWe have focused our research on the development of novel therapies and innovative assessment and diagnostic imaging technologies for retinal vascular and ocular inflammatory disorders, specifically diabetic retinopathy (DR), age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and uveitis. Building on our initial work describing the role of hypoxia and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in diabetic retinopathy (DR) and diabetic macular edema (DME), We have become interested in the biochemical mechanisms that would presumably lead to DME. During the past decade, our research has contributed to the body of evidences that defines the important role of anti-VEGF therapies in DME and AMD, as well as the role of the mTOR pathway and various interleukins in the pathogenesis of uveitis.
We have launched a productive and well-funded clinical research program while at the same time providing clinical care to patients with uveitis and retinal vascular diseases and fulfilling significant teaching and administrative assignments. We have established a number of key collaborators both within and outside the institutions. In addition, we have also established Center in Baltimore and now in Silicon Valley, which has excelled in conducting proof-of concept, early-phase multi-center clinical trials and studies, exploring the clinical disease manifestations and the efficacy of various pharmacologic agents in retinal, uveitic, and ocular inflammatory disorders.
