Dr S. Louis Bridges

Biography

Dr. Bridges is Physician-in-Chief and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Hospital for Special Surgery, as well as Chief of the Division of Rheumatology at both HSS and NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. He is the Franchellie M. Cadwell Professor of Medicine at HSS and the Joseph P. Routh Professor of Rheumatic Diseases in Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Bridges leads a department that collectively provides outstanding care to patients across the full spectrum of autoimmune and inflammatory rheumatic diseases and delivers the highest quality perioperative medical care to patients undergoing surgical procedures at HSS. Dr. Bridges served as Director of the Division of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham from 2008 to 2020. While at UAB, he also served as Director of the UAB Comprehensive Arthritis, Musculoskeletal, Bone, and Autoimmunity Center and Director of the T32 Training Program in Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Diseases Research. He is the immediate past President of the Rheumatology Research Foundation. During his two-year tenure, he also served on the Executive Committee of the American College of Rheumatology. His other past leadership roles include serving as Chair of the ACR Committee on Research, as a co-editor of Arthritis & Rheumatology and as Chair of the NIH Arthritis, Musculoskeletal, and Skin Study Section. Dr. Bridges’ academic and research career has centered on understanding the cellular, molecular, and genetic molecular mechanisms that underlie rheumatoid arthritis, its clinical manifestations, and response to treatment. In particular, he has focused on the role of B lymphocytes and autoantibodies in RA, as well as genetic influences on RA in African Americans. He and his colleagues have defined genetic differences in the MHC and non-MHC genes on susceptibility to RA and on the degree of joint damage between African Americans with RA compared to European and Asian ancestries. More recently, his research program has involved crowdsourcing to facilitate machine learning and big data approaches to answer important clinical questions in RA.