Dr. Erin Wilfong completed her MD at Duke University in 2011. Since that time, she has pursued clinical training in internal medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, rheumatology at the University of California, San Francisco, and pulmonary/critical care medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
She has leveraged her unique training in both rheumatology and pulmonology to pursue translational immunology research in idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM), which encompass dermatomyositis, polymyositis, and the anti-synthetase syndromes. Interstitial lung disease is a major cause of morbidity and mortality for IIM patients, and Dr. Wilfong sees patients with connective tissue-related lung disease in her clinic.
Dr. Wilfong runs the Myositis and Scleroderma Treatment Initiative Center (MYSTIC) cohort, which serves as comprehensive biorepository and longitudinal cohort to facilitate translational research into these devastating diseases. Her current research focuses on abnormal B cell signaling within IIM using mass cytometry, fluorescence cytometry, and single cell RNA-Seq. Her research is supported by both Myositis UK and The Myositis Association.