Two HSS Rheumatologists Receive Prestigious National Career Honors at Annual American College of Rheumatology Meeting

The American College of Rheumatology (ACR) and the Lupus Foundation of America (LFA) have honored two rheumatologists at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) with prestigious career awards recognizing their transformative contributions to lupus research, education and patient care. The ceremonies took place during the ACR Convergence conference in Orlando, Florida, from November 6 to 11.

Mary K. Crow, MD, received the Evelyn V. Hess Award from the LFA, which honors an investigator whose work has significantly advanced understanding of the causes and management of lupus.

Jane E. Salmon, MD, received the ACR Distinguished Basic/Translational Researcher Award, which recognizes a basic or translational investigator who has made outstanding contributions to the field of rheumatology.

Mary K. Crow, MD

Dr. Crow's award follows a career spanning more than four decades at HSS, where she is physician-in-chief emeritus and senior scientist, and director of the Inflammation and Autoimmunity Program at HSS's Research Institute, where she holds the Benjamin M. Rosen Chair in Immunology and Inflammation Research.

"I am truly grateful to receive the Evelyn V. Hess Award," said Dr. Crow. "I am in great company with all of the previous award recipients who were inspired to focus on lupus, a very challenging disease that pushes you to think deeply about the immune system, clinical disease, and why so many organs are affected."

A former president of the ACR and a member for 43 years, Dr. Crow has devoted her entire career to unraveling the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in autoimmune diseases, with particular focus on systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), the most common and widespread form of lupus. By dissecting the immune responses of patients with lupus, she identified molecular targets that are the focus of successful drug development programs, including CD40 ligand and the type I interferon pathway. Dr. Crow continues to study the cellular and cytokine mediators and molecular pathways involved in the autoimmunity and tissue damage that cause disease in people with lupus.

"I study lupus in human patients to understand the entire disease process, beginning with how it starts, why the immune system goes awry, the mechanisms of the resulting tissue damage, and how we may intervene," said Dr. Crow. "My ultimate goal is to better understand lupus so we can identify novel therapies to thwart this disease."

Dr. Crow is optimistic that lupus research will open doors to innovative therapies designed to improve patient outcomes and enhance quality of life. "Over the past 20 years we have learned a tremendous amount about how the immune system is contributing to lupus, which has led to new ideas about therapies, many of which are already in clinical development programs," she said. "There is much current interest in cellular therapies that involve removing a patient's immune cells, re-engineering them to recognize and attack specific disease cells, and then reinjecting them back into the patient. It's all research in progress, and the outlook for lupus treatment is getting better all the time."