Dr. Adamopoulos has been named the 2011 Sontag Foundation Fellow of the Arthritis National Research Foundation, an annual award for innovative and cutting-edge rheumatoid arthritis research. In each of the past 11 years, The Sontag Foundation has utilized ANRF’s expertise to choose and completely fund the grant for a top young researcher studying RA.

This study involves a cytokine identified by Dr. Adamopoulos, interleukin 23 (IL-23), as a key regulator of both joint inflammation and bone destruction in RA. His discovery that abnormal expression of IL-23 causes severe arthritis in mice was recently confirmed in human cells. The next step in his research funded by ANRF is to determine the potential of IL-23 inhibitors as arthritis treatments.