Voor-en achternaam
Prof. dr. John Stone
Functietitel
Professor of Medicine
Bedrijf/Instelling
Harvard Medical School
Spreker Bio
John H. Stone, MD, MPH
Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
The Edward A. Fox Chair in Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital
Executive Chairman, The IgG4ward! Foundation

My longstanding interests are in clinical and translational research in the rheumatic diseases. My work has focused on systemic vasculitides such as giant cell arteritis and ANCA-associated vasculitis, on IgG4-related disease (IgG4-RD), and on glucocorticoid toxicity.

Following medical school at Harvard, internal medicine training at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and rheumatology fellowship at the University of California-San Francisco, I co-founded and directed the Vasculitis Center at Johns Hopkins University in 1997.

In 2008, I was recruited to become the Director of Clinical Rheumatology at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), where I have continued my interest in vasculitis but expanded in other directions, as well. I’ve been honored to lead a number of important clinical trials in vasculitis and other conditions, including:

• The WGET trial (Etanercept in granulomatosis with polyangiitis)
• The RAVE trial (Rituximab in ANCA-associated vasculitis)
• The GiACTA trial (Tocilizumab in giant cell arteritis)
• The BACC Bay trial (Tocilizumab for the prevention of respiratory failure in COVID)
• The MITIGATE trial (Inebilizumab in IgG4-RD)

This work has led to several publications in The New England Journal of Medicine and to regulatory drug approvals of rituximab for ANCA-associated vasculitis and tocilizumab for giant cell arteritis and Takayasu’s arteritis.

I have written and edited a textbook of my own conception entitled A Clinician’s Pearls & Myths in Rheumatology (Springer). Two editions of this book have been published, most recently in 2023.

My second major research interest pertains to IgG4-RD. My group at the MGH has identified several new disease associations with IgG4-RD, including lymphoplasmacytic thoracic aortitis, eosinophilic angiocentric fibrosis, and Riedel’s thyroiditis. We also made the novel observation that B cell depletion with rituximab leads to swift, targeted declines in serum IgG4 concentrations and that this treatment is associated with dramatic clinical improvement. I recently founded a patient advocacy group for patients with this disease called The IgG4ward! Foundation and I serve as the Executive Chairman of the Foundation.

Finally, a burgeoning research interest in the last couple of years pertains to the measurement and prevention of glucocorticoid toxicity. I organized an international group of sub-specialty experts to create a Glucocorticoid Toxicity Index (GTI), designed for use as an outcome measure in clinical trials. I have co-founded a company called Steritas, the purpose of which is to help reduce the world’s dependence of glucocorticoids, thereby diminishing the toxic impact that these medications have on patients. I am the Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board for Steritas.
John Stone