Erica L. Herzog, MD, PhD
Photo: Erica L. Herzog

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Elected 2017

Dr. Herzog is Professor of Medicine and Pathology at Yale School of Medicine. Her training as a physician scientist inspires her motivation to seek new treatments for chronic lung diseases. She spent more than 15 years pursuing this goal by studying mechanisms of fibrotic remodeling in the adult mammalian lung. Her laboratory has had a sustained impact on the field of pulmonary fibrosis and is credited with several seminal discoveries that have been verified and reproduced in laboratories around the world. Her early work helped ignite interest in the mechanism(s) through which innate immunity is linked to pulmonary fibrosis. For example, her lab was the first to report that monocytes from patients with Scleroderma associated lung fibrosis adopt profibrotic properties following DAMP stimulation. She reported that the lungs of mice exposed to fibrotic stimuli, and humans with IPF, contain aberrantly activated macrophages that can be repolarized with innate immune agonists to attenuate experimentally induced lung fibrosis, a discovery that has informed the development of therapeutic agents that are in various stages of clinical development. She is credited with linking intracellular DNA sensors and their ligands with numerous forms of interstitial lung disease. Most recently she reported that a previously unrecognized nerve-lung connection drives mammalian lung fibrosis.  As the founding director of Yale's ILD Center of Excellence she bridges the gap between clinical medicine and basic science by providing access to cutting edge therapies and compassionate, patient centered care.  Finally, in her role of Associate Dean of Student Research at Yale School of Medicine, she is responsible for developing the careers of the next generation of medical scientists.