Ronald Messner

Professor of Medicine
Division of Rheumatic and Autoimmune Diseases

Dr. Ronald Messner is a Professor of Medicine, and past Director of Rheumatology. He plays a major role in the clinical activities of the division, attending in three half-day clinics per week and on the inpatient consult service 2.5 months of the year. He directs the second-year medical school curriculum in rheumatology, and is the director of the Department of Medicine's annual Review Course for physician education, as well as the Medical Grand Rounds program. He is a principal investigator on one NIH-funded research project and co-investigator on another that are focused on the mechanism through which virus infection may trigger autoimmunity. He is also principal investigator on an NIH-funded grant that explores the possibility of using stem cell transplantation in combination with specific immunotherapy to induce immune self-tolerance as a treatment of collagen induced arthritis in mice.

Research being conducted by Dr. Ronald Messner

Drs Ronald Messner and Patty Tam are investigating the efficacy of stem cell transplantation to treat systemic autoimmunity. They carry out experiments utilizing the mouse collagen-induced arthritis model for these studies. Their work will lead to a better understanding of the role of environmental and immune factors in the re-development of systemic autoimmunity after bone marrow ablation. A second project examines those viral gene products that are important for the development of systemic autoimmunity and inflammatory mysitis following coxsackievirus infection. They are currently attempting to determine exactly which genes in the virus are responsible for inducing inflammation. Once the genes that cause the disease are identified, they can determine how these genes work and subsequently, the mechanism responsible for disease. These studies may have broad implications for treatment and prevention of a variety of autoimmune disease such as RA, SLE, and PM/DM.

Publications PUBMED