Dr. William Rigby, MD

Principal Investigator

I went to Columbia College and conducted neurochemistry research for a year before going to Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. While there, I worked on the Hemophilus influenza vaccine development with Dr. Porter Anderson, who eventually developed the pediatric vaccine that is used worldwide today. Following my M.D. degree, I completed my residency and rheumatology fellowship training at the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital in Hanover, New Hampshire, becoming a Professor of Medicine, and Microbiology and Immunology in 1997 and the Vice-Chairman of Academic Affairs in the Department of Medicine in 2008.

Since doing my post-doctoral fellowship in the immunology laboratory of Dr. Michael Fanger between 1983-5, my research career has had three broad chapters. The first chapter involved the understanding of the immunomodulatory role of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3, which led into the area of post-transcriptional gene regulation. This second chapter involved the regulation of mRNA turnover and translation and involved the identification of a number of RNA binding proteins and their functional characterization including hnRNP A1, A2, Polypyrimidine Tract Binding Protein, and Tristetraprolin.

These studies eventually prompted a more translational focus of the lab that evolved with the development of a clinical research program in Rheumatoid Arthritis and Psoriatic Arthritis. These programs led to greater interest in biomarkers and the creation of two clinical biorepositories for rheumatic diseases and knee osteoarthritis. The goals of these approaches will be to better predict treatment outcomes including patient satisfaction. As part of these studies, the insights of Dr. Jonathan Jones led to identifying novel biologic activities (trogocytosis) of rituximab, an anti-CD20 antibody. This work has been extended by a talented graduate student (Sladjana Skopelja) to an analysis of the genetic signals imparted by trogocytosis. These approaches are designed to better inform the use of this effective agent in the clinical arena. This dovetails with our attempting to better understand the autoimmunity and clinical correlates observed in RA and Cystic Fibrosis.

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