Rennie Rhee, MD, MSCE

Dr. Renie Rhee is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Rheumatology at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the Penn Vasculitis Center. Her research focuses on integrating high-dimensional data with clinical epidemiology to impact patient care in the field of autoimmune vasculitis. To study upper airway mucosal immunity in vasculitis, Dr. Rhee led the development of an NIH-funded longitudinal biorepository of over 900 nasal swab specimens with linked clinical data from 260 patients with vasculitis and healthy patients. Through collaborations with other groups, Dr. Rhee is applying molecular and cell culture techniques to study sinonasal epithelial responses and their role in relapse. Building upon this work and leveraging the relatively large cohort of vasculitis available at Penn, the goal of her Colton Center Penn Cohort pilot award is to integrate multi-omic assessment of the upper airway mucosa with deep immune profiling of blood to understand the molecular events that occur during the transition from quiescent to active disease state in vasculitis. In relapsing autoimmune diseases such as AAV, a deeper understanding of the pre-disease state may identify novel targets of therapy and inform development of prognostic biomarkers which enhance precision therapeutic approaches.

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