Rheumatologists in the Spotlight

Dr. Salmon trained in medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City and was the first woman chosen for the Medical Scientist Training Program in 1978. She completed a fellowship in rheumatic diseases at New York Hospital and the Hospital for Special Surgery. She is now the co-director of the Mary Kirkland Center for Lupus Research at the Hospital for Special Surgery.

Her two decades of rheumatology research—and lupus research in particular—have included basic, translational, and clinical research. She contradicted accepted thinking about antiphospholipid syndrome and was convinced that inflammation, not thrombosis, is the event that leads to pregnancy loss in patients with the disorder. Her research to prove this hypothesis is considered one of the seminal achievements of recent research in rheumatology.

Dr. Smolen: RA Revolutionary

Dr. Smolen

Dr. Salmon shares the 2007 Nachman Award with Dr. Smolen, chair of rheumatology at the Medical University of Vienna (Austria). Dr. Smolen was chosen for the award for his work identifying crucial steps in the pathogenesis of generalized and local bone dismantling in chronic inflammatory rheumatic illnesses.

Dr. Smolen, a longtime colleague of Dr. Maini, has also done extensive research into preventing the destruction of joint tissue in patients with RA. He began his career in the late 1970s as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Immunology at the University of Vienna. He met Dr. Maini in the late 1980s and became one of the first investigators for the clinical trial of the effects of cytokines and anti-TNF. His research found that the TNF therapy also resulted in a much lower progression of joint destruction. His further work in this area focused on dosing and the used of combination therapy using anti-TNF and methotrexate.

“I was overwhelmed by learning that I was to receive this highly prestigious award,” Dr. Smolen says, “and at the same time very grateful—grateful to the jury that had assigned the prize to my work and thus gave it public recognition, and grateful to my collaborators in my own department and internationally. Without their input, support, and important activities, the research … for which the prize was awarded would not have come so far.”

Terry Hartnett is a frequent contributor to The Rheumatologist.