Livia Casciola-Rosen, PhD

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

 

Bio

Livia Casciola-Rosen Ph.D. is a Professor of Medicine. After graduating from the University of Cape Town with a doctoral degree in Medical Biochemistry, she pursued postdoctoral training in Cell Biology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She initially joined the faculty in the Department of Dermatology at Johns Hopkins, and subsequently became a faculty member in Rheumatology.

Dr. Casciola-Rosen’s research has focused on the shared mechanisms underlying the autoimmune rheumatic diseases, with an emphasis on scleroderma and myositis.  In collaboration with Dr. Rosen, she has used disease-specific autoantibodies as innovative probes to define the events that initiate and drive the autoimmune response in the rheumatic diseases. Her work currently addresses the following areas: (i) defining the cells in vivo which express the highest concentrations of autoantigens targeted in specific phenotypes, and demonstrating that these cells are the targets of immune attack; (ii) understanding the autoantigens targeted in cancers associated with rheumatic diseases, and elucidating the underlying mechanisms, and (iii) identifying novel antibodies that have utility as clinical biomarkers.

In addition to overseeing the research laboratory, Dr. Casciola-Rosen directs the Sample Processing and Immunoassay Research Core in the Divisional Rheumatic Diseases Research Core Center (RDRCC).  She also co-directs the Rheumatology Fellowship program, which provides research mentorship and career guidance to trainees. Dr. Casciola-Rosen, together with Dr. Ami Shah, co-leads the Precision Medicine Program in Rheumatology. This mechanism-focused initiative uses data from prospectively followed patients to define subgroups in the different rheumatic diseases based on distinct phenotypic features, trajectories over time, and mechanism-based measurements.  Dr. Casciola-Rosen collaborates with Drs. Shah, Zeger, and Rosen on translational projects at the nexus of basic, clinical, and statistical research.

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