Lionel B.ivashkiv MD

Dr. Ivashkiv is Chief Scientific Officer at the Hospital for Special Surgery and Professor of Medicine and Immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine. He holds the Richard L. Menschel Research Chair and is the David H. Koch Chair in Arthritis and Tissue Degeneration at HSS. Dr. Ivashkiv is also an Attending Physician and Director of the David Z. Rosensweig Genomics Research Center at HSS.

As Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Ivashkiv oversees the Hospital’s clinical, translational, and basic research programs, which encompass over 200 scientists and staff working to identify causes of and new treatments for orthopedic and rheumatic conditions such as arthritis, bone, and soft tissue injuries, autoimmune diseases, and musculoskeletal pain and deformities. Long-term research goals include expanding translational research, building multidisciplinary teams to study patients to answer key clinical questions, enhancing clinical research; and broadening the scope and impact of basic science on musculoskeletal disorders, with a focus on tissue repair, improving surgical outcomes, autoimmunity, and inflammation, aging of musculoskeletal tissues, genomics, new treatments, and precision medicine.

Dr. Ivashkiv’s laboratory investigates the pathogenic mechanisms of cytokines in inflammatory and musculoskeletal conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, osteolysis, orthopedic implant loosening/failure, and systemic lupus erythematosus. He is interested in how cytokines and inflammatory factors regulate the activation and function of innate immune and stromal cells, with a focus on macrophages, osteoclasts, and synovial fibroblasts. Macrophages play key roles in inflammation and tissue damage/repair, osteoclasts destroy bone, and synovial fibroblasts contribute to arthritis. Cytokines are key regulators of these cells and of immune responses important in inflammatory and musculoskeletal diseases. Cytokines determine the severity of inflammation and the extent of associated tissue damage and/or repair. The Ivashkiv laboratory studies cytokine signaling, mechanisms of cytokine production, and epigenetic regulation of inflammatory gene expression to discover new mechanisms and therapeutic targets for inflammatory and musculoskeletal diseases.