• The Association of Rheumatology Professionals, a division of the American College of Rheumatology, recently honored Rachael A. Gordon, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine, UPMC Division of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, with the 2024 Distinguished Fellow Award. The award reflects her outstanding contributions to the advancement of rheumatology. Dr. Gordon is building a Sjögren’s disease research program to better understand the condition and to fuel the development of future therapies.
  
  

• Dana P. Ascherman, MD, Deborah J. Co, MD, Robyn T. Domsic, MD, MPH, David J. Helfrich, MD, Chester V. Oddis, MD, and Betsy F. Shook, MD, are among the physicians recognized on the 2024 Top Doctors^® list. Peer-to-peer nominations and a rigorous research process ensure only the most qualified doctors are honored.

• Mehret Birru Talabi, MD, PhD, received a Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award. She was awarded for her contributions to the field of reproductive rheumatology, which led to the development of a new paradigm for addressing reproductive health within subspeciality medicine and in vulnerable and high-risk populations. Her peers cited her work providing a “strong moral compass and attention to social determinants of health and reproductive justice in our field” and predict that it will continue to transform clinical practice and theoretical approaches in rheumatology and subspecialty medicine more broadly.

• The award is bestowed upon faculty who have shown a commitment to research, inclusivity, and mentorship as women leaders in the Department of Medicine.

• Tanya Chandra, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine
• Rachael Gordon, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine
• Niranjana Natarajan, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine
• Cristina Padilla, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine
• Benjamin Plotz, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine
• Charu Rajput, PhD, Research Instructor
• Kaushik Sreeram, MBBS, Postdoctoral Associate
• Sarah Graves, Clinical Research Coordinator III
• Laurie Hope, Team Lead – Clinical Research Nurse
• Erin Rockwell, Manager – Research and Evaluation
• Wendy Spigle, Research Compliance Specialist III

Our Rheumatology Fellowship Program is the only one in the United States to offer a myositis track. The 2024 Class of Fellows are:

• Nick Huang, MD, PhD
• Kelsey Lemmen, MD
• Ziongbin Lin, MD
• Garima Singh, MD
• Eaman Al-Hassan, MBBS

• A multicenter collaborative study published in Nature, titled “A Disease-Associated Gene Desert Directs Macrophage Inflammation Through ETS2” provides a significant advancement in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of inflammatory bowel disease, but also how the same inflammatory pathway modulates the inflammatory response in other autoimmune disorders, including Takayasu arteritis and ankylosing spondylitis. Contributing to the research study from the UPMC Division of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology was Amr H. Sawalha, MD.

• Daniella M. Schwartz, MD, from the UPMC Division of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, along with Urekha Karri, PhD, and Manuel Carpio Tumba, PhD, published a review in the Journal of Clinical Immunology that analyzed the biology, regulation, and roles of A20, which is a critical negative regulator of immune activation. A20 targets key signaling molecules like TRAF6 and RIPK1 to reduce inflammatory reactions.

• A paper published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine demonstrates that targeting Myd88 or its upstream activators may be a viable therapeutic option for systemic lupus erythematosus. Co-authors of the paper titled “B cell-intrinsic Myd88 regulates disease progression in murine lupus” include Jeremy Tilstra, MD, PhD, and Rachael Gordon, MD, PhD, from the UPMC Division of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, as well as collaborators from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Departments of Immunology and Pathology.

• During her rheumatology fellowship at UPMC, Rachael Gordon, MD, PhD, recognized the need for a multidisciplinary program to treat patients with Sjögren’s disease. On July 1, she became assistant professor in the UPMC Division of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology and started the first center at UPMC to comprehensively care for patients with Sjögren’s disease and advance research for innovative therapies.

• The UPMC Division of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology’s Sebastian Sattui, MD, MS, and Robyn T. Domsic, MD, MPH, published a study in Arthritis Care and Research that describes the demographics, comorbidities, and treatment patterns in a national cohort of patients with polymyalgia rheumatica who received care from rheumatology providers.

• The study results showed that SSc-ILD lungs have activated lymphoid populations. The presence of activated cytotoxic NK cells suggest they may play a role in alveolar epithelial cell loss, while their upregulated expression of amphiregulin suggests they may also induce bronchial epithelial cell hyperplasia. CD8+ T cells in SSc-ILD appear to transition from resting to the tissue resident memory phenotype.

   

• In a manuscript published in Frontiers in Immunology, a team from the UPMC Division of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology outline findings from a study that explored how key cellular interactions influence the interplay between innate and adaptive immune responses in idiopathic inflammatory myopathy. The study’s senior author was Dana P. Ascherman, MD, professor of medicine and chief of the UPMC Division of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology.

• Researchers from UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh have been awarded a National Institutes of Health (NIH) U54 grant to establish the Equity in Maternal and Birthing Outcomes and Reproductive Health through Community Engagement (EMBRACE) Center of Excellence. This multidisciplinary initiative is designed to address the profound and persistent racial and socioeconomic disparities affecting maternal and reproductive health, especially among Black populations in Allegheny County, Pa. Co-principal Investigators: Dara Daneen Méndez, PhD, MPH, associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology and the associate director of the Center for Health Equity at the University of Pittsburgh; Mehret Birru Talabi, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Medicine in the UPMC Division of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology; Hyagriv Simhan, MD, professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences and executive vice chair of Obstetric Services at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital.
  
  

• Mehret Birru Talabi, MD, PhD, describes pregnancy outcomes among people with systemic lupus erythematosus, discusses medication safety in pregnancy, and describes contraception safety.

• Rohit Aggarwal, MD, discusses how to explain the diagnostic process of idiopathic inflammatory myopathies, recall the distinctive clinical phenotypes associated with myositis specific autoantibodies, and describe the treatment updates in idiopathic inflammatory myopathies.

• Daniella M. Schwartz, MD, discusses how to identify patients at high risk for germline and somatic mutations causing rheumatic diseases, how to appropriately work patients up for rare genetic diseases by ordering the correct clinical laboratory tests, and how to identify tertiary and quaternary referral centers that can aid in the diagnosis and treatment of rare genetic diseases.