Professor of Medicine and Chief of Rheumatology
University of Washington
I started in TCR signaling in the mid80s, discovered during my post doc that the TCR signals via tyrosine kinases, found that CD45 activates Lck, first to report that Csk regulates Lck, studied numerous tyrosine phosphatases in the 90s and early 2000s, discovered the autoimmunity-predisposing polymorphism in PTPN22 (2004) having earlier worked on the function of PTPN22, defined the physiological roles of PTPN6, PTPN7, PTPN9, DUSP3, and discovered several new dual-specificity tyrosine phosphates. During a 10 1/2 year sabbatical as Vice President of R&D at Amgen, MedImmune/AstraZeneca and Gilead Sciences, I led the development of 24 novel therapeutics (18 biologics, 6 small-molecules drugs), 4 of which are now approved by the FDA and EMEA for the treatment of asthma, eosinophilic asthma, COPD, eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis, psoriasis, and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Back in academia at UW since 2018, my lab is aiming to elucidate the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis and SLE, largely based on patient immune cells in a translational approach.
Mentor type:
- Scientific