Elizabeth J. Phillips, M.D.
HIV, drug safety, pharmacology, personalized medicine, drug hypersensitivity, HLA, immunopathogenesis, severe H1N109 disease
Elizabeth Phillips, MD is Professor of Medicine, Pharmacology, Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology and is Director of Personalized Immunology at the Oates Institute for Experimental Therapeutics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She is also Director of the Centre for Clinical Pharmacology and Infectious Diseases at the Institute for Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Murdoch University in Perth Western Australia. She is also co-director for the personalized-care scientific working group for the Vanderbilt Center for AIDS Research. She has been immensely successful in answering important scientific questions about variation in drug responses, in particular interactions between drugs and the immune system. She played a key leadership role in establishing HLA-B*57:01 and the roadmap from discovery to translation of HLA-B*57:01 as a routine screening marker used prior to abacavir prescription to prevent hypersensitivity. Her current work focuses on defining the immunopathogenesis of severe adverse drug reactions and in particular using innovative technologies to define genetic, molecular and cellular signatures in severe cutaneous adverse drug reactions such as SJS/TEN that will guide prevention, early diagnosis and define new therapeutic targets. She is currently is part of the PGRN and a principal investigator on a P50 grant to study the immunopathogenesis and improvement in the prediction of HLA-mediated drug reactions.
Research Information
The Phillips lab has a research and clinical program in drug Hypersensitivity that specifically focuses on the tissue specificity, genetic basis and immunopathogenesis of severe T-cell mediated adverse drug reactions such as Stevens-Johnson Syndrome/Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis and drug reaction with eosiniophiia and systemic symptoms. Her lab studies the development of genetic, molecular and cellular signals to predict and prevent these severe life-threatening adverse drug reactions using novel single cell technologies and mass cytometry . Her impact has been national and international and she has forged collaborations with groups in Australia, Africa and Southeast Asia to guide in the implementation of scientific programs to study the expansive and genetically diverse drug hypersensitivity syndromes. This research program is paired with an outpatient clinical drug allergy service which occurs weekly at VASAP (2611 West End Ave).
