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Dr. Ellen Ginzler Honored with Distinguished Clinical Investigator Award from the American College of Rheumatology

Nov 16, 2015

Brooklyn, NY – Ellen M. Ginzler, MD, MPH, distinguished teaching professor and chief of rheumatology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, was honored with the Distinguished Clinical Investigator Award from the American College of Rheumatology at the organization’s recent annual meeting in San Francisco. The award is given to a clinical scientist making outstanding contributions to the field of rheumatology.

Dr. Ginzler is an internationally known expert on lupus nephritis, an inflammation of the kidneys that affects many people suffering from lupus. As principal investigator of a U. S. Food and Drug Administration Orphan Products Program grant to assess the efficacy and tolerability of two drug treatments for lupus nephritis, she headed the largest multicenter, investigator-initiated trial of its time for the disease. The results, published as the lead article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2005, changed the paradigm for treating lupus nephritis.

Dr. Ginzler is a master of the American College of Rheumatology and a fellow of the American College of Physicians, and was a long-time member of the Board of Governors of the New York Chapter of the Arthritis Foundation. She has been an active participant in the Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics and the Lupus Clinical Trials Consortium, both organizations devoted to studying outcomes in systemic lupus erythematosus and promoting new therapies for managing the disease.

In 2012, Dr. Ginzler received the Lupus Foundation of America's Evelyn V. Hess Award, presented annually to a clinical or basic researcher whose body of work has advanced the understanding of the pathophysiology, etiology, epidemiology, diagnosis, or treatment of lupus.

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About SUNY Downstate Medical Center

SUNY Downstate Medical Center, founded in 1860, was the first medical school in the United States to bring teaching out of the lecture hall and to the patient’s bedside. A center of innovation and excellence in research and clinical service delivery, SUNY Downstate Medical Center comprises a College of Medicine, College of Nursing, School of Health Professions, a School of Graduate Studies, School of Public Health, University Hospital of Brooklyn, and a multifaceted biotechnology initiative including the Downstate Biotechnology Incubator and BioBAT for early-stage and more mature companies, respectively.

SUNY Downstate ranks twelfth nationally in the number of alumni who are on the faculty of American medical schools. More physicians practicing in New York City have graduated from SUNY Downstate than from any other medical school.