Ramon G. Bonegio, MD

Biography

I am a physician- scientist who trained in internal medicine and nephrology at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa before moving to Boston to complete a nephrology fellowship and PhD in molecular medicine. Since 2003 I have focused my clinical activities on the diagnosis and management of patients with lupus-nephritis and immune complex glomerulonephritis and in 2011 joined with Dr. Robert Lafyatis (rheumatology), Dr. Michael York (rheumatology), Dr Hanni Menn-Josephy (nephrology), Dr. Ian Rifkin (nephrology), and Dr. Christina Lam (dermatology) to establish the Boston Medical Center Lupus Program which I currently co-direct. Since establishing the Lupus Program, our center has participated in four clinical trials involving lupus patients which has allowed us to develop the infrastructure required for the acquisition of patient informed consents, sample collection and storage, and for the management of the information systems required to maintain a database of relevant clinical characteristics that are linked to each sample.

I have a longstanding interest in autoimmune disease in general and in lupus nephritis in particular and run a basic science laboratory of my own that is funded to investigate the pathobiology of immune-complex glomerulonephritis. We use cell culture systems and mouse models of autoimmunity to define pathways that are required for the development or progression of autoimmunity and use this understanding develop new therapeutics.

My basic science work has given me a unique perspective of the requirements that basic scientists and clinicians have to translate basic science breakthroughs to the clinical arena. In the last two years I have worked with our trial manager Dr Britte Zlatanova to established an autoimmune patient registry at Boston Medical Center that now includes over 100 lupus patients and appropriate control samples. I work in collaboration with several pharmaceutical companies and investigators from Boston University Medical Center, the University of Massachusetts, Pittsburg University, and University of Pennsylvania to share this valuable clinical material in order to develop the understanding the biology of autoimmunity and inflammation in anticipation that this will lead to new therapies that are more effective and less toxic..

Expertise includes: Lupus nephritis, Autoimmune kidney disease, Glomerulonephritis, Toxicity of immunosuppression, Genetics of immune-mediated kidney disease