Blake Warner, D.D.S., Ph.D., M.P.H.

Blake M. Warner, D.D.S., Ph.D., M.P.H., is currently a Stadtman Investigator and Chief of the Salivary Disorders Unit and the Sjögren's disease Clinic. The integrated specialty clinic and associated laboratory focus on characterizing disorders affecting the salivary glands including autoimmune diseases and iatrogenic salivary damage by oncologic therapies. Specifically, we interrogate the clinical phenotype, genetics, and immunopathology of salivary dysfunction states including SS and immune checkpoint inhibitor-induced (ICI) sicca and to inform the clinical testing novel therapeutics to improve health outcomes.

Presently, the Salivary Disorders Unit is pursuing two focused research projects: i) investigating pathogenic T cell subsets in Sjögren's disease and immune checkpoint inhibitor sicca (ICIS, Warner et al., 2019, Burbelo et al., 2019), and ii) the identification of novel mechanisms of salivary dysregulation in genetic forms of Sjögren's disease. The laboratory uses patient-derived tissues to perform integrated tissue investigations using single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) and spatially-resolved RNA-seq (srRNA-seq) and robust clinical data to understand transcriptional state of each salivary cell type. The second aim is to identify unique subsets patients which phenocopy SS but with variants in pathways central to salivary function, or in genes that modify the development of autoimmunity. In studying rare disease variants, we open a window into the biology of complex autoimmune diseases.