Dr. Werth received her MD from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, followed by residency and a postdoctoral research fellowship in Immunodermatology at New York University. Dr. Werth moved to Penn in 1989 as Chief of Dermatology at the Philadelphia VA Hospital. At Penn she directs the Autoimmune Skin Disease study unit, and performs clinical and translational research studies in autoimmune skin disease funded by NIH, autoimmune foundations, and industry. She has performed a number of industry trials for pemphigus and bullous pemphigoid. She has a basic research lab at the VA devoted to autoimmune skin disease and photobiology, funded by NIH and the VA. Dr. Werth’s clinical practice specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with autoimmune skin diseases, including autoimmune blistering disease, lupus erythematosus, and dermatomyositis. She led an international effort to develop disease severity tools for several autoimmune blistering diseases, including pemphigus and bullous pemphigoid. These tools are now used in international trials that are developing new drugs for autoimmune blistering diseases, including the trial leading to the recent FDA approval of Rituximab for pemphigus vulgaris.

Dr. Werth has also performed studies to determine the impact of bullous diseases on Quality-of-life. Her research laboratory has determined the heterogeneity of the inflammatory cell infiltrate in skin in photo-induced autoimmune skin diseases, and correlated this with the response to therapy. Her laboratory has also performed translational research to better understand how novel therapies that modulate inflammatory cells work in autoimmune skin disease. She has been on the IPPF Medical Advisory Board since the beginning of the foundation. Dr. Werth has received numerous honors for her work, including the lifetime achievement award from the Medical Dermatology Society, the Rose Hirschler Award from the Women’s Dermatologic Society, and the American Skin Associations’s Research Achievement Award in Autoimmune & Inflammatory Skin Disorders, the Lifetime Career Educator Award from the Dermatology Foundation, and the Naomi Kanof Clinical Investigator Award from the Society of Investigative Dermatology .

Disclosure: Dr. Werth has consulting and grant funding financial relationships with the lecture topic.