Uncontrolled Inflammation in Large Vessel Vasculitis

Cornelia M. Weyand, M.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Medicine and the Chief of the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford University School of Medicine.  Dr. Weyand’s career as a physician–scientist began at the Mayo Clinic when she joined the faculty of the Mayo Medical and Graduate School in Rochester, Minnesota, as an Assistant Professor in 1990.  In 2000, Dr. Weyand became the Barbara Woodward Lips Professor of Medicine and Immunology at Mayo Medical and Graduate School and from 2001-2004 she directed the Clinical Immunology and Immunotherapeutics Program in the Department of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic.  In 2004, Dr. Weyand moved to Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where she held the David C. Lowance Chair in Medicine and was the Director of the Lowance Center for Human Immunology and Rheumatology. 

Since the early 1990s, she has led a research team in translational immunology supported continuously through funding from the National Institute of Health.  Dr. Weyand has had a special interest in tissue-damaging immune responses in rheumatoid arthritis, atherosclerosis and large vessel vasculitis.  She and her collaborators have established several preclinical models, including a chimera model in which human synovial tissue and human blood vessels are engrafted into immunodeficient mice.  In these model systems, Dr. Weyand’s research team has defined the role of T cells and dendritic cells in deviating from protective to destructive immunity.  Over the last decade, she has devoted special emphasis to the remodeling of the immune system with aging, how chronic disease ages the immune system, and how aged immune cells cause inflammation.  She has defined molecular defects underlying the premature aging process in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, implicating deficiencies in telomerase and the DNA damage sensor Ataxia Telangiectasia Mutated (ATM) in T cell dysfunction.  Together with her fellows and students, Dr. Weyand has identified and characterized immune cells that mediate medium vessel vasculitis and has defined the molecular underpinnings of the immunostromal interactions that cause arterial inflammation.

Dr. Weyand has authored more than 350 manuscripts and delivered more than 260 invited presentations around the world; including more than 20 named lectures.  She is an editor on two textbooks and has contributed more than 40 book chapters on vasculitis and rheumatoid arthritis.  Dr. Weyand has served as a mentor to more than 100 students and fellows, many of whom have pursued a career as physician-investigators.  She has received numerous awards and honors including the Henry Christian Award for Excellence in Research, the Henry Kunkel Young Investigator Award, the Carol Nachmann Award for Rheumatology, the Mayo Foundation Department of Medicine Outstanding Investigator Award, the Emory University School of Medicine Outstanding Research Citation Award, the Paul Klemperer Award from the New York Academy of Medicine, and Notable Woman in Science and Medicine, Elena-Timoféeff-Ressovsky Lecture, Max-Delbrueck Centrum fuer Molekulare Medizin, Helmholz Gemeinschaft, Berlin, Germany.