- Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine (Rheumatology), Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Sokratis Apostolidis is an Assistant Professor of Medicine (Rheumatology) at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, where he combines clinical care of rheumatologic patients with translational research to better understand the origins of autoimmunity. His expertise encompasses systemic autoimmunity — including systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and immune-related adverse events (irAEs) arising in patients undergoing cancer immunotherapy — and he leads a laboratory investigating the immune mechanisms driving these conditions to improve outcomes for both rheumatology and oncology patients.
Dr. Apostolidis completed his medical degree at the University of Athens, his internal medicine residency at the University of Pittsburgh, where he employed advanced genetic analyses to study vascular endothelial cell differences in scleroderma, and a post-doctoral research fellowship at Harvard Medical School, where he demonstrated the importance of the molecular complex PP2A and the role of T regulatory cells in SLE pathogenesis. He subsequently completed his rheumatology fellowship at Penn in the laboratory of Dr. E. John Wherry, focusing on autoimmune phenomena arising after cancer immunotherapy and the use of analytical vaccination to probe immune health.
His work has been recognized with numerous distinctions, including the Measey Physician-Scientist Fellowship Award, the Austrian Basic Research Award from the Department of Medicine, the Scientist Development Award from the Rheumatology Research Foundation, and the American College of Rheumatology Distinguished Fellow Award for 2021.
