Dr. John H. Stone is a preeminent rheumatologist and leading authority in the field of vasculitis and IgG4-related disease. He currently serves as the Director of Clinical Rheumatology at Massachusetts General Hospital and holds the position of Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. After graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1990, Dr. Stone completed his internal medicine training at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a rheumatology fellowship at the University of California-San Francisco. Before joining Massachusetts General Hospital, he co-founded and directed the Vasculitis Center at Johns Hopkins University, establishing himself as a pioneer in inflammatory disease research.
Dr. Stone's groundbreaking work has fundamentally transformed the understanding of IgG4-related disease, a condition largely unrecognized in the United States before his pioneering research. As the world's leading investigator in IgG4-RD, he has identified key organ system manifestations and was the first to recognize the efficacy of B cell depletion as a treatment strategy. His research group has assembled critical insights that have revealed important mechanisms of human immunology, including the identification of a novel T lymphocyte that may drive fibrosis across various human diseases. Dr. Stone's leadership culminated in hosting the first two international symposia on IgG4-RD in Boston (2011) and Hawaii (2014), which catalyzed global research efforts and established diagnostic criteria for this emerging disease entity.
Beyond his research achievements, Dr. Stone founded the IgG4ward! foundation to improve patient understanding and management of IgG4-RD, recognizing the need for comprehensive patient education in this rapidly evolving field. His ongoing work continues to focus on unraveling the immunological mechanisms underlying IgG4-RD with implications for numerous other fibrotic conditions. As both a clinician and researcher, Dr. Stone remains deeply committed to translating scientific discoveries into tangible patient benefits through international clinical trials and novel therapeutic approaches. He continues to mentor the next generation of rheumatologists while expanding the frontiers of knowledge in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases at the forefront of medical innovation.
