Prof. Michelle Petri

Michelle Petri MD MPH pursued her medical degree at Harvard University, then completed her medical residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, Rheumatology fellowship at UCSF and joined Hopkins in 1986. She then obtained her MPH at the Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.

She is the director of the Hopkins Lupus Center and Professor of Medicine.

The Hopkins Lupus Cohort is a longitudinal cohort of SLE patients funded by NIH; it currently includes over 2,000 patients. The major outcome measures are prediction of disease activity, prevention of organ damage, and improvement in quality of life. The cohort has made important contributions to the understanding of corticosteroid toxicity in SLE, the preventive role of hydroxychloroquine and the pathogenesis of accelerated atherosclerosis.

The center also participates in clinical trials (playing an important role in the development of belimumab for SLE) and NIH-funded studies of the genetics of SLE, autoantibodies in SLE, and single cell studies of lupus kidney biopsies (the AMP project).