Virginia Pascual

Virginia Pascual, M.D., is a pediatric rheumatologist with long-standing experience in translational research. Her laboratory is focused on understanding pathogenesis, finding biomarkers to guide therapeutic interventions, and identifying therapeutic targets for human inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, including Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), various forms of arthritis, dermatomyositis, as well as immune responses to a broad variety of infections and vaccinations. She is the Program Director of an NIAID-funded Autoimmunity Center of Excellence and a NIAMS-funded Center for Lupus Research. Dr. Pascual has also directed the NIAID-funded Baylor Human Immunology Program Consortium Center focused on vaccine responses in health and disease. Pioneering genomic studies from her laboratory have identified the role of dendritic cells and interferon in SLE and of cytokines such as IL1 in Systemic-onset Juvenile Arthritis, which has led to successful therapeutic interventions in this disease. More recently, her team developed a personalized approach to identify molecular drivers of disease activity in pediatric SLE patients. This approach enabled them to stratify patients into seven major molecular subgroups, which could lead to improved design of clinical trials for this disease.