John H. Stone, MD, MPH
Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
The Edward A. Fox Chair in Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital
I have had a career-long interest in teaching, research, and clinical care of patients with rheumatic diseases; i.e., inflammatory diseases mediated by patients’ overly active immune systems. My work has focused on the systemic vasculitides and, more recently, on IgG4-related disease (IgG4-RD). I co-founded and directed the Vasculitis Center at Johns Hopkins University. This Center was the first in the United States to focus on inflammatory diseases of blood vessels such as ANCA-associated vasculitis and giant cell arteritis, and the work that flowed from those early efforts has ultimately led to the approval of new treatments for both of those diseases by regulatory agencies across the world.
My second major research interest pertains to an emerging disease, IgG4-RD. My group at the MGH has identified several new disease associations with IgG4-RD, including lymphoplasmacytic thoracic aortitis, eosinophilic angiocentric fibrosis, and Riedel’s thyroiditis. We also made the novel observation that B cell depletion with rituximab leads to swift, targeted declines in serum IgG4 concentrations (the other IgG subclasses remain stable), associated with dramatic clinical improvement. I was the first author on an NEJM Mechanisms of Disease paper in 2012 entitled “IgG4-Related Disease” and the senior author on a Lancet review (2014). I was the Principal Investigator on an NIH-funded R13 grant to conduct the world’s first International Symposium on IgG4-RD (2011). I have subsequently organized the second and third International Symposia, as well (2014, 2017). I am the Principal Investigator in an NIH-funded Autoimmunity Center of Excellence (ACE), funded through 2024.
Finally, I have written and edited a textbook of my own conception entitled A Clinician’s Pearls & Myths in Rheumatology (Springer). A second edition of this book will be published in 2022.
