Erica Herzog, MD, PhD
Cards
About
Titles
John Slade Ely Professor of Medicine (Pulmonary) and Professor of Pathology
Director, Yale Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD) Center of Excellence, Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine; Associate Dean, Medical Student ResearchBiography
My training as a physician scientist motivates me to seek new treatments for chronic lung diseases. I have spent more than 15 years pursuing this goal by studying the relationship mechanisms of fibrotic remodeling in the adult mammalian lung. My 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. My early work helped ignite interest in the mechanism(s) through which innate immunity is linked to pulmonary fibrosis. For example, my lab was the first to report that monocytes from patients with Scleroderma associated lung fibrosis adopt profibrotic properties following DAMP stimulation. We 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. We also are credited with linking intracellular DNA sensors and their ligands with numerous forms of interstitial lung disease. Most recently we reported that a previously unrecognized nerve-lung connection drives mammalian lung fibrosis. My work has been published in journals such as Science, Science Translational Medicine, Nature Medicine, Cell, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Lancet Respiratory Medicine, and the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. I have been a continuous recipient of NIH funding since 2005 in the form of K08, R01 and U01 awards, and have been honored by my peers with the Jo Rae Wright Award from the American Thoracic Society and induction into the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI). My discoveries in these domains have been informed by collaborations with Yale immunologists, neuroscientists, and bioengineers with the goal of developing new ways to improve respiratory health.
Appointments
Office of the Dean, School of Medicine
Associate DeanDualPulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine
ProfessorPrimaryPathology
ProfessorSecondary
Other Departments & Organizations
- Herzog Lab
- Internal Medicine
- Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD) Program
- Molecular Medicine, Pharmacology, and Physiology
- Office of Student Research
- Office of the Dean, School of Medicine
- Pathology
- Pathology Research
- Program in Translational Biomedicine (PTB)
- Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine
- Rheumatic Diseases Research Core
- Scleroderma Program
- The Center for Precision Pulmonary Medicine (P2MED)
- Translational Lung Research Program (TLRP)
- Winchester Center for Lung Disease
- Yale Combined Program in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS)
- Yale Fibrosis Program
- Yale Medicine
- Yale Stem Cell Center
- Yale Ventures
Education & Training
- Clinical Fellow
- Yale School of Medicine (2005)
- PhD
- Yale University School of Medicine (2005)
- Resident
- Mount Sinai Medical Center, NY (2000)
- MD
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1997)
- BA
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1993)
Research
Academic Achievements and Community Involvement
Clinical Care
Overview
Erica Herzog, MD, PhD, is a pulmonologist who specializes in interstitial lung disease and pulmonary fibrosis. She also cares for patients in Yale New Haven Hospital’s medical intensive care unit.
“I love working with patients to understand their disease, and develop a treatment that aligns with their needs and values,” Dr. Herzog says. “The long-term relationships I have developed with my patients is the most rewarding part of my job.”
Many lung diseases have few effective therapies, and Dr. Herzog tells her patients that physician-scientists are working tirelessly to provide new options. In addition to caring for patients, she is an active researcher herself and is associate dean for medical student research at Yale School of Medicine. “I chose this field to become a respiratory biologist who helps patients breathe more easily,” she says. “As a physician-scientist, I am excited about the opportunity to make a clinical observation in a patient that I then study in the lab. This approach has led to our discovery of new disease mechanisms, many of which are at various stages of clinical development.”
Patients can do their part by exercising, eating right, and being honest about how their doctors can best help them and their families, Dr. Herzog says.
Dr. Herzog is director of Yale's Interstitial Lung Disease Center of Excellence, where she leads a team of physicians, advanced care providers, nurses, support staff, and researchers whose common goal is to provide outstanding care to patients with interstitial lung disease and sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease that affects the lungs and other organs.