- Rheumatology Fellow, NYU Grossman School of Medicine / NYU Langone Health
- Breidenbach Scholar, Judith and Stewart Colton Center for Autoimmunity
Dr. Elliot A. Philips is a physician-scientist and rheumatology fellow at NYU Grossman School of Medicine whose research focuses on the molecular interactions at the immunological synapse that regulate T cell activation in autoimmune disease. He graduated from Tufts University with highest thesis honors in biology before earning his MD and PHD in immunology through the NYU Medical Scientist Training Program.
Dr. Philips’ doctoral research centered on the PD-1 immune checkpoint pathway, where he characterized structural and evolutionary differences between the PD-1 ligands PD-L1 and PD-L2, and demonstrated that members of the PD-1 signaling axis dimerize through their transmembrane domains — findings that point toward novel strategies for designing therapies that modulate T cell responses in both autoimmunity and cancer. Earlier, as an undergraduate, he studied mechanisms of DNA fragility associated with repeat expansion disorders.
Following internal medicine residency, Dr. Philips entered rheumatology fellowship to bring basic immunology into closer dialogue with clinical autoimmune disease research. His current work integrates molecular biology, biophysics, and translational immunology to investigate how receptor organization and signaling within T cells can be therapeutically manipulated. In parallel, he is developing functional immune profiling approaches using patient-derived samples to characterize heterogeneity in biologic treatment responses across T cell-mediated autoimmune diseases.
Dr. Philips is pursuing an independent career as a translational immunologist, with a long-term focus on developing new strategies to modulate T cell function and advance precision therapy for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.
