M. Virginia Pascual
Virginia Pascual is the director of the Gale and Ira Drukier Institute for Children鈥檚 Health and the Ronay Menschel Professor of Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine.
Her research has been instrumental in understanding and improving treatments for serious autoimmune and inflammatory diseases in children, particularly and pediatric lupus. Her work helped identify key immune system proteins that contribute to these conditions. She played a prominent role in clinical trials that tested treatments for systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis, which brought significant relief to nearly 70% of patients. Her lab has also developed personalized strategies to stratify pediatric lupus patients using molecular markers.
Pascual obtained her MD from the Universidad Complutense and completed a residency in Pediatrics in her native Spain. She was previously Director of the Pediatric Rheumatology division at UT Southwestern and co-Director of the Baylor Institute for Immunology Research. Her work has earned numerous honors including the Lupus Insight Prize, the American College of Rheumatology Distinguished Basic/Translational Investigator Award, and the Lupus Research Alliance鈥檚 Global Team Science Award.