William Ridgway

William Ridgway, MD, Chief, Division of Rheumatology, Allergy, and Clinical Immunology, The Jack and Donald Chia Endowed Professor of Medicine, University of California, Davis, School of Medicine

Research Description: I have researched the immunology and genetics of autoimmune disease since 1993, when I joined C. Garrison Fathman’s lab at Stanford and started research into T1D. I started my own lab in 1998 at the University of Pittsburgh, and discovered the first spontaneous model of primary biliary cholangitis (PBC- The “NOD.c3c4” mouse) serendipitously while working on the genetics of Type one Diabetes (T1D) with Linda Wicker. We published this model in 2004 and I began my collaboration with Eric Gershwin on autoimmune liver disease models at that time. Clinically I am a rheumatologist and Chief of the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Clinical Immunology at UC Davis. As a rheumatologist I see and treat a wide variety of autoimmune diseases, which gives me a broad perspective on treatment approaches to autoimmunity. This has contributed to a shift of focus of my lab, to concentrate on therapies that can reverse autoimmunity. Single organ autoimmune diseases such as T1D or PBC have not responded as well to treatments (such as anti-TNF or anti-B cell directed antibodies) that have been very effective in systemic autoimmune diseases such as RA or Ankylosing Spondylitis This suggests that we don’t know enough about disease pathogenesis and are missing key mechanisms—so further basic research on these enigmatic diseases is critical in order to develop therapies targeting novel pathways. My lab seeks to deepen our mechanistic understanding of innate and adaptive immunity in autoimmunity as a basis for developing new therapeutic approaches to human disease.