Virginia Pascual

Dr. Pascual is a pediatric rheumatologist interested in translating her basic discoveries into biomarkers and therapies that will improve the lives of patients. After obtaining her medical degree and completing a residency in Pediatrics in her native Spain, she joined the laboratory of J. Donald Capra at UT Southwestern in Dallas, where she trained in Molecular Biology and Immunology. Her initial research uncovered the human immunoglobulin heavy chain variable region gene repertoire involved in the generation of human autoantibodies. She also was the first to characterize the human tonsillar B cell subset where somatic mutation initiates, and the contribution of amino acid insertions and deletions to the somatic diversification of antibodies. This work inspired her to pursue training in Pediatric Rheumatology under the mentorship of Chester Fink and Marilynn Punaro at UT Southwestern. Dr. Pascual became Director of the Pediatric Rheumatology division at the same institution in 1998. Since then, her research has focused on understanding pediatric inflammatory and autoimmune diseases with the goals of identifying therapeutic targets and useful biomarkers. Studies from her laboratory contributed to the discovery that type I interferon (IFN) and interleukin 1 (IL-1) are pathogenic players in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) and Systemic Onset Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (sJIA), respectively. Importantly, she was at the forefront of clinical trials using IL-1 blockers in sJIA, which showed remarkable clinical benefits in nearly 70% of patients. Dr. Pascual has held numerous NIH-funded awards and is currently the Program Director of an NIAID-funded U19 Autoimmunity Center of Excellence, a NIAMS-funded P50 Center of Research Translation, and a Lupus Research Alliance (LRA)-sponsored Global Team Science Award, all of which focus on Pediatric Autoimmunity. After spending most of her career as a clinician-scientist in Dallas, TX, in 2017 she joined Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, where she serves as the Ronay Menschel Professor of Pediatrics and the Director of the Drukier Institute for Children’s Health, which is committed to accelerating research to better understand and treat diseases that start in childhood.