Puja Mehta, MD, PhD

Dr. Puja Mehta, MD, PhD, is a physician-scientist with subspecialty expertise in rheumatoid arthritis– and myositis–associated interstitial lung disease (RA-ILD and myositis-ILD). Her research program emerged from the clinical challenge of caring for patients with systemic autoimmune disease complicated by progressive, heterogeneous lung involvement and limited mechanism-based therapeutic options. Dr. Mehta’s research focuses on defining immune mechanisms that link systemic autoimmunity to lung inflammation, fibrosis, and clinical outcomes, with the goal of developing mechanism-driven biomarkers and therapeutic strategies.

Dr. Mehta’s doctoral work integrated wet-lab experimental biology and dry-lab computational analysis, applying single-cell transcriptomics, proteomics, and functional human lung biology to bronchoalveolar lavage, blood, and lung tissue to delineate inflammatory and fibrotic immune programs in ILD. She developed advanced expertise in experimental lung biology, including primary human lung fibroblast assays, lung organoids, and in vitro models of fibrosis, alongside end-to-end bioinformatic analysis of high-dimensional multi-omic datasets. This training was supported by research fellowships at Yale School of Medicine and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK Heidelberg, Germany).

During her PhD, Dr. Mehta used Post–COVID-19 ILD as a human fibro-inflammatory model to define immune–stromal mechanisms of lung fibrosis using integrated multi-omic approaches, including single-cell RNA sequencing of bronchoalveolar lavage and peripheral blood mononuclear cells, proteomics, and functional validation of candidate pathways using human lung fibroblast assays. This work generated the first multi-omic atlas of Post–COVID ILD and is currently under submission.

Dr. Mehta has clinical and research expertise in hyperinflammatory immune states, including cytokine storm, as shared pathogenic mechanisms across severe autoimmune, infectious, and fibro-inflammatory lung diseases. Her work examines how dysregulated cytokine signaling and myeloid cell activation drive systemic inflammation, tissue injury, and downstream fibrotic remodeling, and how these processes intersect with organ-specific disease manifestations. This expertise informs her translational approach to identifying biomarkers of immune dysregulation and therapeutic targets to modulate harmful inflammation while preserving host defense.

Dr. Mehta’s background in myeloid biology was further shaped during a pharmaceutical physician fellowship in Immunoinflammation Research and Development at GlaxoSmithKline, where she served as lead project physician on a phase II clinical trial of otilimumab (anti–GM-CSF) for rheumatoid arthritis. This experience strengthened her ability to integrate human immunology, experimental biology, computational analysis, and clinically actionable endpoints.

As a faculty member at Yale, Dr. Mehta is building an independent, interdisciplinary research program that integrates wet-lab experimentation, dry-lab bioinformatics, and human translational research across Rheumatology, Pulmonary Medicine, Immunobiology, and data science to study systemic autoimmune rheumatic disease–associated ILD (SARD-ILD). Her work is supported by strong multidisciplinary mentorship and close integration with Yale’s autoimmune and ILD clinical and research programs.