Dr. Richard Bucala, newly appointed as the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Medicine, Pathology, and Epidemiology and Public Health, studies immune system regulation with a focus on how protective responses can lead to immunopathology and disease.
Currently, Bucala’s laboratory is leading multidisciplinary efforts to develop immunotherapies tailored to an individual’s genetic makeup. An anti-macrophage migration inhibitory factor antibody developed by the group is undergoing clinical testing in oncology, and an anti-macrophage migration inhibitory factor receptor antibody, recently FDA approved, is under evaluation for the treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus. Bucala also is credited with the discovery of the fibrocyte, which is being targeted therapeutically in different fibrosing disorders.
Bucala is chief of the Department of Internal Medicine’s Section of Rheumatology, Allergy, and Immunology, and Rheumatologist-in-Chief at Yale New Haven Hospital. He teaches at the Schools of Medicine and Public Health, and at Yale College on the topics of inflammation, autoimmunity, immunotherapy, and malaria.
Bucala received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Yale in 1979, his Ph.D. from Rockefeller University, and his M.D. from Cornell Medical College. He completed his medical residency at Harvard at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital, and his fellowship in rheumatology at Cornell’s Hospital for Special Surgery.
Bucala was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He is editor-in-chief of the American College of Rheumatology’s primary publication, Arthritis & Rheumatology, and has served on numerous advisory boards for the National Institutes of Health, the pharmaceutical industry, academia, and private foundations.