About The SAA/Bruckel Early Career Investigator Award in AxSpA

As part of our ongoing mission to expand horizons in spondyloarthritis research, the Spondylitis Association of America hopes to encourage new, upcoming rheumatologists and researchers to focus on the future of treatment and research in ankylosing spondylitis and related diseases.

To this end, we created the Spondylitis Association of America/Bruckel Early Career Investigator Award, which recognizes outstanding “contributions to the care and understanding of patients with spondyloarthritis.” The award amount has increased over the years and now the winner receives a $30,000 grant from SAA for use in spondyloarthritis research. The award, named in honor of our co-founder Jane Bruckel, is given annually to the early career investigator who shows the most promise to contribute to the understanding or therapy of axial spondyloarthritis.

Applications open in May!

Do you have spondyloarthritis-related research that needs funding? View the submission info on the application page or download the submission guidelines and submit your applications between May 1st and no later than August 1^stto be considered.

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Dr. Paras Karmacharya

Paras Karmacharya, MD, MS, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Rheumatology and Immunology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He also serves as Director of the Vanderbilt Psoriatic Arthritis and Spondyloarthritis Center.

2024 Award Winner

During his internal medicine residency, Dr. Karmacharya focused on clinical research and epidemiological studies using national databases. As a rheumatology fellow at Mayo Clinic, he investigated the epidemiology of psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and the comorbidities associated with SpA. His research has been published in leading rheumatology journals, including Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, Arthritis Care & Research, and ACR Open Rheumatology. In recognition of his contributions, he received the 2020 Philip S. Hench Award for Excellence as a Subspecialty Fellow in Rheumatology.

About Dr. Karmacharya’s Award-Winning Work

Dr. Karmacharya’s research focuses on improving the understanding and treatment of axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA). With support from SAA funding, he is leading efforts to expand research through the NEtwork for Research and Development in Spondyloarthritis (NERDS) cohort. This initiative will create a detailed database of real-world axSpA patients, capturing key traits such as symptoms, disease progression, and treatment responses. His work also involves developing algorithms that use electronic health records to identify and classify axSpA patients. By linking genetic factors to disease characteristics, this research will lay the foundation for future studies and help advance personalized treatment strategies for axSpA.

Dr. Rachael Stovall

Rachael Stovall, MD, MAS, is an Acting Assistant Professor in the Division of Rheumatology at the University of Washington, specializing in axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA).

2024 Award Winner

Dr. Stovall completed a research-focused rheumatology fellowship at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), where she also earned a Master of Advanced Studies in Clinical and Epidemiological Research. Her research began during her internal medicine residency at Boston University Medical Center, where she studied the impact of tumor necrosis factor inhibitors and other therapies on SpA patients. Her findings on fracture risk, opioid use, and sex differences in functional outcomes in axSpA have been published in Arthritis Care & Research and Nature Reviews Rheumatology.

About Dr. Stovall’s Award-Winning Work

Dr. Stovall’s research focuses on understanding and addressing the unique challenges faced by women with axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA). With SAA funding, she is leading an exercise intervention study designed specifically for female axSpA patients using the ExerciseRx app. The funding will support in-lab testing of these exercises, helping to gather feasibility data needed for her NIH K23 application. The K23 is a career development award aimed at equipping early-career researchers with the skills and preliminary data required for independent research funding. By supporting this study, the SAA grant plays a crucial role in advancing Dr. Stovall’s research and strengthening her efforts to improve treatment strategies for women with axSpA.

Dr. Michael Paley

Michael Paley, M.D., Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Rheumatology at Washington University School of Medicine. He also serves as director of a multidisciplinary ocular rheumatology clinic that treats patients with inflammatory eye diseases in coordination with the Department of Ophthalmology.

2023 Award Winner

Dr. Paley’s research focuses on studying systemic inflammatory disorders in immune-privileged organs (i.e., areas of the body that are less likely to have an immune response) such as the eyes and the brain. This includes HLA-B27+ anterior uveitis in axial spondyloarthritis and neurological inflammation from sarcoidosis. As an ocular rheumatologist, his research on HLA-B27+ anterior uveitis led him to axial spondyloarthritis research.

About Dr. Paley’s Award-Winning Work

Dr. Paley’s current research focuses on investigating the reasons why individuals with HLA-B27 have a higher susceptibility to developing axial spondyloarthritis. Recently, a crucial immune cell (known as a T cell) has been identified as a potential driver of axSpA. It reacts with a peptide that HLA-B27 presents on the surface of the cell. Dr. Paley’s goal is to figure out how specific these potentially pathogenic cells are to axSpA. “We think it’s very specific to this disease, but we don’t know for sure,” he explains. “If our hypothesis is true and the cells are specific to axSpA, then it would help us in terms of picking out very targeted therapy to treat disease, and it might also help us to get earlier diagnoses for people. We might be able to someday predict who’s going to be more likely to develop disease.”

Dr. Jean Liew

Jean Liew, MD is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Section of Rheumatology, Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine at Boston University in Boston, MA.

2022 Award Winner

Dr. Liew is currently juggling three research focus areas: spondyloarthritis, osteoarthritis, and the impact of COVID-19 on people living with rheumatic disease. While she was in fellowship training for rheumatology, her research in axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA) focused on cardiovascular risk, specifically whether NSAIDs or TNF inhibitors were associated with hypertension risk. Additionally, as a member of the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance (GRA) and its steering committee, she has led multiple projects relating to data collection and analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals with rheumatic disease.

About Dr. Liew’s Award-Winning Work

Dr. Liew’s current work in axSpA looks at the long-term use of opioid medications, and whether different therapies including TNF inhibitors could decrease the need to use those medications. She is also working with Dr. Maureen Dubreuil at Boston University on studying the factors that contribute to delayed diagnosis in people with axSpA. They are both interested in studying interventions that can reduce that delay to diagnosis, such as better referral strategies to get people with inflammatory back pain (who might have axSpA) seen sooner in rheumatology clinics.

Dr. Ruth J. Napier

Ruth J. Napier, PhD is the principal investigator of a translational immunology laboratory at the VA Portland Health Care System and an Assistant Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland, OR.

2021 Award Winner

Dr. Napier’s interests are a union of her PhD training at Emory University in host-pathogen interactions, drug development, and cellular immunity, with her subsequent postdoctoral fellowship in rheumatology and autoimmune disease at OHSU. Dr. Napier’s studies have been well received in the autoimmunity and immunology fields, and they have been published in the journals Nature Communications and Journal of Immunology.

About Dr. Napier’s Award-Winning Work

Dr. Napier’s research is focused on understanding the immunological (cellular) mechanisms that trigger autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases in genetically-susceptible individuals. In particular she is interested in how microbial-signaling molecules like caspase recruitment domain-containing protein 9 (CARD9) control disease in ankylosing spondylitis (AS). Although it is known that mutations in the gene CARD9 are associated with increased susceptibility to AS, how CARD9 controls AS pathogenesis is unknown. Using an experimental model of AS, Dr. Napier recently showed that microbial exposure causes CARD9 to promote a pathogenic neutrophil response, which in turn activates pathogenic CD4+ T cells to produce IL-17 and cause disease. These data are immediately clinically relevant, given that IL-17 blockade is used to treat AS despite a current lack of knowledge in the field as to how these harmful IL-17 responses are initiated. Information gained in these studies will be used to help design future therapeutics to treat AS.

Dr. Mark C. Hwang

Mark C. Hwang, MD, MS is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, McGovern Medical School, Division of Rheumatology.

2021 Award Winner

Dr. Hwang’s career goals are to combine his epidemiology and clinical research foundations with a developing skill set in “-omics” research to do translational experiments to generate new insights into pathogenesis and outcomes of axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA).

About Dr. Hwang’s Award-Winning Work

“At the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, we have been interested in studying long-term outcomes of ankylosing spondylitis (AS) such as spinal disease. Over their lifetimes, roughly one-third of AS patients experience radiographic disease limited to their sacroiliac joints while others develop severe radiographic disease resulting in complete spinal fusion. The inability to identify which patients will have radiographic progression have hampered clinical trials to study this outcome. Therefore, there is a critical, unmet need to define AS patterns/endotypes with distinct spinal disease trajectories and to identify reliable biomarkers that predict these endotypes. Our long-term goal is to help AS patients by predicting their risk of long-term spinal damage, informing them a priori, and allowing timely initiation of potential disease-modifying treatment before irreversible spinal damage has occurred. Our overall objectives in the UTHSC-H Spondyloarthritis Program are to (i) develop algorithms that will identify AS radiographic spinal damage patterns through molecular data and (ii) characterize the integral biologic pathways responsible for spinal damage. Through the longitudinal multicenter “Prospective Study of Ankylosing Spondylitis” PSOAS cohort, patients have volunteered to provide radiographs and biosamples of DNA, RNA, and serum over decades. We recently have begun to obtain molecular data of these biosamples in terms of Whole-ExomeSequencing, RNA-Seq and apatamer-based proteomic screens. We hope to combine these different levels of molecular biology with the longitudinal clinical data provided by investigators and patients. Since joining faculty at UTHSC-H in August 2018, we have published several manuscripts that have used longitudinal and latent variable modeling to understand the rich axSpa dataset at UTHSCH. We have published several manuscripts on comorbidities, clinical features, and patient-reported outcomes in AS. I have also started an NIH-funded investigator-initiated clinic trial in AxSpa patients. I hope this trial can bring direct benefit to persons with axSpa at the trial completion, given the adaptive, clinical trial design.”

Dr. Tejpal Gill

Tejpal Gill, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at the Division of Arthritis & Rheumatic Diseases at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), in Portland, OR.

2020 Award Winner

Dr. Gill’s main focus is on deciphering the host-microbe interactions leading to the pathogenesis (origin and development) of spondyloarthritis (SpA), especially ankylosing spondylitis. Dr. Gill has demonstrated that HLA-B27 associated microbial dysbiosis is distinct between different host backgrounds and/or environment. And yet, in the susceptible genetic backgrounds, the same immune/inflammatory response is observed. These results are in contrast to the existing notion that a single or a small number of microbes may drive SpA disease.

About Dr. Gill's Award-Winning Work

Dr. Gill’s career goal is to investigate the molecular and microbial mechanisms leading to the development of SpA. Currently, her group is investigating the relationship between the gut microbes and immune response in HLA-B27 positive patients with ankylosing spondylitis. Efforts are underway to identify genes in addition to HLA-B27 that may contribute to development of SpA. Since many ankylosing spondylitis patients present subclinical gut inflammation, she is working towards the development of intestinal organoids – a novel tool in cell biology study – to decipher the molecular mechanisms leading to HLA-B27-associated loss of gut epithelial barrier function.

Dr. Shao-Hsien Liu

Dr. Shao-Hsien Liu is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Epidemiology, at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS). He is an early stage musculoskeletal epidemiologist with years of clinical practice as a physical therapist.

2019 Award Winner

Dr. Liu has extensive experience using nationally representative samples with complex, multistage designs and observational data with measurements of patient-reported outcomes and physical activity. Dr. Liu is a member of the Spondyloarthritis Research and Treatment Network (SPARTAN) and the American College of Rheumatology (ACR).

About Dr. Liu's Award-Winning Work

Dr. Liu’s research focus includes the application of advanced epidemiological and statistical methods to generate knowledge to ultimately improve quality of care for patients with spondyloarthritis (SpA). Specifically, he is interested and excited to further the understanding of disease trajectories in patients with SpA by focusing on measurements of patient-reported outcomes and physical function. He is currently working on several projects related to SpA. In addition to conducting a systematic review of the literature on physical activity and attitudes towards exercise among patients with SpA, he is leading an analysis using clinical cohort data from the UMass Memorial Hospital (led by Dr. Jonathan Kay) to understand differences in self-reported physical activity and attitudes towards physical activity between patients with predominately axial versus those with predominately peripheral SpA. More recently, he was a recipient of the SPARTAN Seed Grant Award, which will allow him to conduct exploratory sequential mixed method design to address the root causes that drive sex- and gender-differences in reporting health quality of life among patients axial SpA.

Dr. Abhijeet Danve

Dr. Danve is a rheumatologist and Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at Yale University, with particular interest in clinical and translational research focused on early diagnosis of axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA).

2019 Award Winner

Dr. Danve is founding director of the spondyloarthritis program at Yale. Dr. Danve has contributed original research articles, systematic reviews and review articles in the field of axSpA. His publications in respected journals cover various aspects of axSpA such as biomarkers, screening and referral, treat-to-target strategy, the role of complementary medicine and comorbidities. He is a member of the Spondyloarthritis Research and Treatment Network (SPARTAN), and has served on the Registry subcommittee of SPARTAN since 2017.

About Dr. Danve's Award-Winning Work

Dr. Danve’s current research is focused on early diagnosis of axSpA by applying efficient and cost-effective screening and referral strategies. Dr. Danve has developed an online clinical screening tool for early identification of axSpA and is currently conducting a funded clinical research study to evaluate its effectiveness. He is also trying to find new biomarkers for the diagnosis of axSpA.

Dr. Danve has developed a comprehensive multidisciplinary spondyloarthritis program at Yale with the aim of providing excellent care to axSpA patients and conducting high quality clinical and translational research. He is also interested in collecting patient reported outcomes and disease activity measures electronically to integrate those into EMRs (electronic medical records) for improving the quality of care delivery for axSpA.

Dr. Runsheng Wang

Dr. Wang is a rheumatologist and Assistant Professor at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, with clinical and research interests in epidemiology and comparative effectiveness research in axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA).

2018 Award Winner

Dr. Wang has published several first-author manuscripts in leading rheumatology journals on axSpA. Prior to joining Columbia, she was a Lawrence Shulman Scholar at NIH/NIAMS, and a recipient of Rheumatology Research Foundation Scientist Development Award in 2015. In addition to her research, as a member of SPARTAN, she has served on SPARTAN’s registry subcommittee since 2016, and participated in the 2018 update of the treatment recommendation of axSpA, a collaborative project by the American College of Rheumatology (ACR), SPARTAN and the Spondylitis Association of America (SAA).

About Dr. Wang's Award-Winning Work

Dr. Wang is interested in epidemiology and comparative effectiveness research in axial spondyloarthritis. Taking an epidemiology approach, she has studied the natural history of axial spondyloarthritis (ax-SpA), and showed that progression to ankylosing spondylitis only occurred in a minority of patients with non-radiographic ax-SpA after a 15 year follow up. She also conducted Bayesian network meta-analysis based on data from clinical trials and showed comparable short-term efficacy of different TNF inhibitors, and comparable short-term efficacy of different NSAIDs. In the future, she will continue her research in these areas, to better understand the effectiveness and safety of medications for ax-SpA in the real world and for individual patients.

Dr. Maureen Dubreuil

Dr. Dubreuil is a rheumatologist and researcher at Boston University and the Boston VA. Her research focuses on complications of spondyloarthritis and side effects of treatment.

2018 Award Winner

In addition to her research, Dr. Dubreuil is working to educate the next generation of doctors on evaluating patients with back pain, and caring for those with spondyloarthritis. For the past two years, she coordinated a symposium for doctors in training as part of the annual meeting of the Spondyloarthritis Research and Treatment Network (SPARTAN). She is involved in developing treatment guidelines for Axial Spondyloarthritis through the American College of Rheumatology/SAA combined initiative.

About Dr. Dubreuil's Award-Winning Work

“One theme of my work is heart disease in spondyloarthritis. I led a study that examined the risk of heart attacks with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) in spondyloarthritis patients, using a large database from the United Kingdom. This study found that specific NSAIDs may increase risk of heart attacks to a greater degree in people with spondyloarthritis than those with osteoarthritis. I am studying this same topic in other populations, including a large database in the United States. I also collaborated on a study of the effects of statin (cholesterol medication) use in ankylosing spondylitis, finding that statins appear to have a more protective effect in people with ankylosing spondylitis than in the general population.”

“A second theme of my work is understanding patients’ preferences for treatments in spondyloarthritis. In 2016 I began work on a National Institutes of Health-funded project to assess factors that influence spondyloarthritis patients’ preferences for medications. In the coming year, I will begin work on a cost-effectiveness study, comparing different approaches to spondyloarthritis treatment, such as starting with an NSAID versus starting with a biologic medication. I am also involved in the VA-based spondyloarthritis registry, called Program to Understand the Long-term Outcomes in Spondyloarthritis.”

Dr. Kristine Kuhn

Dr. Kuhn obtained her MD and PhD at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. There she developed her interest in rheumatology while working on her PhD in arthritis.

2018 Award Winner

After graduating medical school, Dr. Kuhn moved to St. Louis, MO to complete her residency in internal medicine and fellowship in rheumatology at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University. During this training, Dr. Kuhn observed many challenges that individuals face in the diagnosis and treatment of spondyloarthritis. Therefore, she began to focus on this topic in her research and clinical activities when she returned to Colorado as a faculty member in 2013 to start her own research program.

About Dr. Kuhn's Award-Winning Work

Dr. Kuhn’s clinical and research interests are related to spondyloarthritis with a special emphasis for those with overlapping Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD). Research has shown that 30-50% of patients with spondyloarthritis will develop bowel inflammation and about 50% of patients with IBD develop disease outside of the intestines that affects their eyes, skin, and joints, which prompts consultation with a rheumatologist. Her recent work is looking at how gut bacteria develop local immune cells that traffic to the joints and initiate arthritis. She and her team hope to identify these cells as a biomarker for disease as well as inhibit this trafficking for the treatment of spondyloarthritis.

Dr. Joerg Ermann

Joerg Ermann is a rheumatologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and Instructor at Harvard Medical School with a research background in cellular/molecular immunology and animal models of autoimmune disease.

2015 Award Winner

Dr. Ermann’s interest in ankylosing spondylitis and spondyloarthritis (AS/SpA) was sparked by patient encounters early during a rheumatology fellowship. As a doctor with significant understanding of musculoskeletal disease and systemic autoimmune conditions, he recognized the unmet need for further research. Dr. Ermann then chose to focus his research on AS/SpA disease mechanisms with the goal of using relevant mouse models and translational research approaches to understand AS/SpA pathogenesis with the ultimate goal of developing better therapies.

About Dr. Ermann's Award-Winning Work

Dr. Ermann’s research focuses on the overlap between the genetic factors and disease mechanisms driving AS/SpA and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Using the aforementioned mouse models that strongly resemble human conditions, specifically TRUC (T-bet-/- Rag2-/- Ulcerative Colitis), he was able to identify a number of cytokines (small proteins that affect intercellular communication and interaction), Il-17A, Il-23 and Il-1, that are critical in the pathogenesis of AS/SpA. This discovery will enable him to research the mechanisms of pathological new bone formation as a result of these cytokine interactions.

Dr. Jessica Walsh

Jessica Walsh, MD, is a rheumatologist and Assistant Professor at the University of Utah School of Medicine, Division of Rheumatology who has dedicated her career to spondyloarthritis patients.

2015 Award Winner

Dr. Walsh received her B.A. in Biology from Whitman College in Washington. She then moved to Utah where she spent the next 16 years advancing her career in Rheumatology. In 2003 she received her MD from the University of Utah School of Medicine and proceeded to obtain her Intern, Resident, Chief Resident and Fellow statuses before finally receiving her M.S.C.I. in 2015. Over her distinguished career, she has achieved numerous board certifications and scholastic honors, published many peer-reviewed journal articles/abstracts, and has presented 7 oral presentations to various institutions and associations. Her clinical practice is dedicated to those affected by spondyloarthritis, hosting four half-day SpA clinics per week with the primary goal of improving early disease recognition.

About Dr. Walsh’s Award-Winning Work

Dr. Walsh is a strong believer that high quality observational data is critical for understanding SpA and her work in registry has allowed the development of powerful methodologies for SpA research in large datasets. To date, she has enrolled over 652 participants in registries at the University of Utah and the Salt Lake City Veterans Affair (VA) Medical Center and has designed many others such as the Utah Psoriasis Initiative Arthritis (UPI Arthritis), Psoriatic Arthritis Research Collaboration (PARC), Longterm Outcomes with B27 And Spondyloarthritis (LOBAS), and the Program to Understand the Longterm Outcomes of SpondyloARthritis (PULSAR). In addition to registry work, she has conducted extensive research in Veterans Affair databases and collaborated with bioinformatics experts to develop previously unfeasible methods of identifying undiagnosed individuals. Her registry and database research has contributed to our scientific knowledge in the areas of screening instruments, severity measurement tools, work disability, gender differences, perceptions of therapy, fatigue, sleep apnea, and other comorbidities.

Dr. Mark Asquith

Mark Asquith is a research assistant professor at the Oregon Health & Science University with a specialization in microbiome studies.

2015 Award Winner

Dr. Asquith received his BSc in Biology from the University of Nottingham in 2004. While acquiring his PhD from Oxford University (2009), he was trained by Fiona Powrie, arguably one of the leading immunologists in the world. Since then, he has undertaken multiple fellowships and written numerous publications that have contributed to the understanding of arthritis and spondyloarthritis – some of which have been selected for oral presentation at the American College of Rheumatology. His scientific career has been dedicated to the identification and functional characterization of inflammatory and regulatory immune mechanisms in rheumatic disease.

About Dr. Asquith's Award-Winning Work

For over a decade, Dr. Asquith has been actively researching the intricate relationship between the immune system and the trillions of microbes that inhabit the intestinal tract, the latter commonly known as the gut microbiome. His previous studies have made it increasingly clear that the impact of the intestinal microbiome extends far beyond the gut, affecting conditions as diverse as autism, diabetes, arthritis and spondyloarthritis. The current focus of his laboratory has thus been to provide a novel diagnostic for spondyloarthritis as well as determine therapeutic targets for its clinical management. To accomplish this, studies are being performed on the intestinal microbiome and immune functions in both SpA patient populations and the HLA-B27 transgenic rat in order to identify potent changes to the microbial and metabolite constitution in SpA and bridge the gap between phenotypical and pathophysiological pathways.

Dr. Pamela Weiss

Pamela Weiss, MD, MSCE, is a pediatric rheumatologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) whose clinical and research interests are focused on juvenile spondyloarthritis (JSpA).

2014 Award Winner

Dr. Weiss earned an A.B. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University, and her medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine (2002). She completed both her Pediatrics Residency and Rheumatology fellowship training at CHOP. Dr. Weiss was co-principal investigator of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) JIA Treatment Recommendations Update, as well as a member of the Core Expert Panel for development of the 2014 Clinical Practice Guidelines for Axial Spondyloarthritis, a collaborative undertaking between ACR, SAA, and SPARTAN. Additionally, Dr. Weiss serves on the ACR Pediatric Rheumatology Special Committee. Her commitment to research and improving the care of children with juvenile arthritis is also evident in her roles as vice chair of the Childhood Arthritis & Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA) Juvenile Arthritis Research Committee and her recent appointment as Clinical Research Director for the CHOP Division of Rheumatology. She has lectured nationally and internationally on juvenile arthritis and spondyloarthritis.

About Dr. Weiss's Award-Winning Work

Dr. Weiss’ research focuses on the pharmacoepidemiology and outcomes of JSpA. JSpA is an umbrella term that also encompasses three categories of juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) — enthesitis-related arthritis (ERA), juvenile psoriatic arthritis, and undifferentiated arthritis (children who meet criteria for more than one JIA category). Using patient-reported data from the CHOP clinic, she demonstrated that children with ERA have worse function, poorer quality of life, and higher pain intensity than children with other categories of JIA. She confirmed and published these findings using a large national registry of pediatric rheumatic diseases. To address the knowledge gaps of this understudied condition, her efforts are specifically directed to better defining the disease and developing treatment strategies for children that will directly improve both clinical and patient-reported outcomes.

Dr. Nigil Haroon

Nigil Haroon, MD, PhD, is a rheumatologist at the University Health Network and an assistant professor of medicine and rheumatology at the University of Toronto.

2013 Award Winner

He has a keen interest in ankylosing spondylitis (AS). Specifically, his area of research includes radiographic progression, identifying novel therapeutic targets and understanding the immunology and genetics of AS. He is well published in this area and has been an invited speaker at several international meetings. Dr. Haroon has won several awards, including a CRA young faculty award for both clinical and basic research and, in 2013, the Spondylitis Association of America/Bruckel Early Career Investigator Award.

About Dr. Haroon's Award-Winning Work

Dr. Haroon has a well-established translational research program at the University Health Network in Toronto and is renowned for his work in the functional genomics of AS, especially the role of a new gene, ERAP1, which was found to be strongly associated with AS in genome-wide association studies. He has published paradigm-shifting studies in AS, including work on disease modification in AS with tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitors. He published the largest population based study in AS, showing a significantly increased risk of mortality in AS patients after experiencing heart attacks and strokes. As a result of this study, there is now an emphasis on early identification and treatment of traditional cardiovascular risk factors in AS patients.

Dr. Lianne Gensler

Lianne Gensler, MD, is a rheumatologist at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center and is director of the Ankylosing Spondylitis Clinic.

2012 Award Winner

Dr. Gensler earned a medical degree at the University of California, Irvine. She completed an internal medicine residency, chief residency, and rheumatology fellowship at UCSF and then joined the medical staff in rheumatology. Her primary research interest is in studying the disease progression of ankylosing spondylitis and identifying predictors of osteoporosis development in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus. She is an assistant clinical professor of medicine at UCSF.

About Dr. Gensler's Award-Winning Work

Dr. Gensler states, “Though we believe that ankylosing spondylitis is strongly rooted in genetics, what we are less clear on is how we can slow down its progression. Through our research, we have been able to show that smoking is a risk for progression, doubling the odds. We have also shown for the first time that patients who use the biologic agents – (TNF inhibitors) – have a more than 50 percent reduction in the risk of progression. It is not clear that everyone needs these drugs, as some patients may never progress, and some patients may be able to mitigate this progression by other modalities. I am thrilled to be able to continue to work on these ideas and help move the field forward.”

Dr. Judith Anne Smith

Judith Anne Smith, MD, graduated summa cum laude from Yale University. She then completed her MD/PhD program at the University of Chicago NIH Medical Scientist Training Program.

2011 Award Winner

Her graduate work in immunology was performed under the guidance of Dr. Jeffrey Bluestone. After completing her medical degree, she completed her pediatrics residency and pediatric rheumatology fellowship training at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Her fellowship training, under Dr. Robert Colbert, inspired her to pursue research in the pathogenesis of ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and related conditions. She joined the faculty as an assistant professor in pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where she continues to care for pediatric patients in the Pediatric Rheumatology Clinic and leads an active research program. Dr. Smith’s research goal remains to elucidate the fundamental processes that drive the evolution of ankylosing spondylitis in hopes of ultimately leading to more rational therapeutic development.

About Dr. Smith's Award-Winning Work

The macrophage is an important cell in the inflammatory response. Macrophages and other cells in the immune system produce cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor (TNF) when they are activated. Inhibition of these cytokines can be an effective therapeutic strategy in AS.

Dr. Smith and her colleagues at the University of Wisconsin showed that, compared to healthy controls, macrophages from patients with ankylosing spondylitis make more cytokines when stimulated with a bacterial product. The cytokine, IL-23, was especially increased. Pharmaceutical companies are actively testing inhibitors of IL-23 or inhibitors that target cytokines induced by IL-23 as potential treatment for AS.

For more than 35 years, the Spondylitis Association of America has spoken out on behalf of all who suffer from spondylitis. By making a donation to SAA, you will directly contribute to much-needed public awareness efforts, educational outreach programs, research initiatives, treatment advances and the ongoing search for the cure. Add your voice to our mission to be a leader in the quest to cure ankylosing spondylitis and related diseases, and to empower those affected to live life to the fullest. Together, our voice is louder. Together, we make a difference.

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