Lisa A. Beck, M.D.

Dr. Lisa Beck has dedicated her 25 year career to finding safe, effective treatments for patients with atopic dermatitis, more commonly known as eczema. Internationally recognized as an eczema expert, her research was instrumental in the development of the first biologic drug called dupilumab (brand name Dupixent) for the treatment of adults with moderate to severe eczema. She was the lead author of a 2014 New England Journal of Medicine paper that set the stage for the FDA approval of this drug in March 2017. She is Co-Director of the URMC Center for Allergic Disease Research (CADR) which was recently chosen as one of four US centers with the World Allergy Organizations Center of Excellence designation. She has been the secretary of the International Eczema Council (IEC) since its inception in 2014, emeritus member of the National Eczema Association (NEA) Scientific Advisory committee, and President-Elect of the Society of Investigative Dermatology. She has been NIH-funded to study this disease since 1992 and her main focus is now on understanding why certain eczema patients are susceptible to cutaneous viral infections such as herpes simplex as well as bacterial colonization or infection with Staphylococcus aureus. As the founding director of the URMC Dermatology Clinical Trials Unit, she has completed >14 clinical AD registry, mechanistic, and interventional trials, all of which met or exceeded enrollment/retention expectations and has > 500 person URMC AD patient Registry. She has had continuous NIH funding since 1994, and has been co-PI of the NIH/NIAID-funded Atopic Dermatitis Research Network (ADRN) since it inception in 2004, which has amassed the largest cross-sectional registry of deeply phenotyped AD subjects in the world. She has been PI of the ADRN Biomarker Repository since 2014 with >150,000 serum and skin swab samples. Dr. Beck received her undergraduate degree from Mount Holyoke College, her medical degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, two years of internal medicine training at Strong Memorial Hospital, Dermatology residency at Duke University and an Immunology Research fellowship at Johns Hopkins University.