Gary Firestein, MD

The pages of this Web site are filled with the results of legions of researchers who spend long hours studying the intricate workings of the body – investigating what goes wrong in arthritis and how to make it right. We mention their names, their titles and their findings, but we usually don’t say much about who they really are and what brought them to arthritis research – as well as how they find inspiration to solve some of the most puzzling questions in medicine.  

For Gary S. Firestein, MD, inspiration can come from surfing a wave; Steffany Haaz, a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins, finds it through dance and yoga; and James Jarvis, MD, achieves it by picking up a guitar. Meet these three Arthritis Foundation-funded researchers who live life to the fullest, inside and outside the lab.

Gary S. Firestein, MD, Professor of Medicine and Chief, Division of Rheumatology, Allergy & Immunology, University of California, San Diego

Gary Firestein, MD, is better known as a leading arthritis researcher than a surfer. In the 1990s, his research on cytokines contributed to the development of biologic response modifiers to treat rheumatoid arthritis (RA); his recent research has focused on how certain enzymes within cells control genes involved in inflammation. He is the 2006 recipient of the Arthritis Foundation’s Lee C. Howley Sr. Prize for arthritis research.

AT: Why are you a surfer?

GF: I learned to surf in my late 30s. I was looking for a sport I could share with my son. I fell in love with surfing, and perhaps because of that, he, being a typical teenager, didn’t like it. But I became an addicted surfer.

AT: What do you love about it?

GF: It took about six months of torment and humiliation before I started getting the hang of it, but now I enjoy the athleticism. The experience of catching a wave and riding it gives me a great feeling of accomplishment and exhilaration.

AT: Where have you gone to catch waves?

GF: Cloud Break in Fiji is the most challenging wave I’ve ever surfed. It breaks in the middle of the ocean, on top of a razor-sharp coral reef, with no land within a mile. I was convinced my wife increased our life insurance policy before she sent me on the trip as a birthday present.

AT: How has surfing influenced you as a researcher?

GF: I think recreation and surfing make me a better, more inquisitive researcher. I’m not sure I would have the ability to come up with as many ideas to pursue in the lab if I didn’t give my brain some downtime.

AT: What led you into rheumatology?

GF: I contemplated a number of specialties, and my interest was piqued when I became involved in a clinical research project on scleroderma heart disease. I was fascinated by the rheumatic diseases.

AT: Can you describe your research?

GF: I’ve focused on the pathogenesis of RA and novel therapeutics. Identifying how inflammatory proteins called cytokines are regulated inside cells may allow us to develop new treatments that can be taken orally, rather than injected, as current biologics are. To me, it’s more about the patients than the science. Will our work identify a novel target that might be useful at some point as a way of treating RA?

Steffany Haaz, MFA, Doctoral candidate, School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore

Steffany Haaz practices what she investigates: A dancer and yoga teacher, her Arthritis Foundation-funded research looks at how holistic movement forms (including yoga, tai chi and dance) can serve as a complementary treatment for RA and other chronic conditions. “We can give people medicine, but it’s important to understand how to use the mind-body connection to make living with a disease like RA easier,” she says.

AT: What led you to be a committed environmentalist and vegan, as well as a practitioner of yoga?

SH: A lot of it was intuitive. When I was only 6, I didn’t want to eat meat – I would spit it out into my napkin. It just never felt right to me. Being an environmentalist ties into my food choices – organic, local, low on the food chain. 

AT: How did you get involved with dance?

SH: I started dancing when I was 2. It was a hobby – I intended to major in neuroscience in college and become a scientist. Somehow the dance department sucked me in. My parents were frightened – “What do you mean you’re majoring in dance?!” Now, though, they see it coming together.

AT: So how did dance lead you back to science and eventually to rheumatology?

SH: My graduate work focused on the mind-body split. We tend to value the work of the mind and see the body simply as a container. But they are two parts of a whole. I became interested in that approach and its relationship to health.

AT: Why did you choose science over art, finally?

SH: I love the open-ended questions in art, but I also love the nitty-gritty details of science. I need both. Bringing the arts into science feels like a better fit for me than trying to bring science into the world of the arts.

AT: Describe your research.

SH: My doctoral dissertation examined whether yoga is as beneficial as other types of exercise for someone with RA, and whether there is anything unique about yoga’s mind-body connection that can help address all the ways arthritis can affect your life.

AT: You teach yoga to people with arthritis. What do you observe in your classes?

SH: When you’re used to not being able to do much with your body, you can develop an adversarial relationship with it. So when you are able to move beyond that, even in a way that might seem insignificant to someone who is able-bodied, it’s a big deal. One student went from sitting to standing without help for the first time, and the whole class applauded – it was really a triumph.

James Jarvis, MD, Professor of Pediatrics, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City

A talented musician, Jim Jarvis, MD, investigates the role of the innate immune system in juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA) in hopes of offering earlier and more targeted treatment to children with the disease.

AT: What kind of music do you play?

JJ: I was a serious classical guitar player all the way through my rheumatology fellowship. Then, about five years ago, a bunch of friends formed a band. We’re called the Space Heaters, and we play 1950s and ’60s rock‘n’roll. Playing guitar in a rock band involves totally different scales than with a classical guitar, and I had to relearn the whole instrument.

AT: What led you into the field of pediatric rheumatology?

JJ: When I was in training, in the late ’70s and early ’80s, I was struck by how different the time frames are in pediatric and adult rheumatology. If you are a 14-year-old girl with a rheumatic disease and you have your all-state violin tryout in two months, losing even just four weeks of functional activity might change the shape of your high school career. I also realized that so little was known about these diseases that even a country boy from Vermont like me could make a contribution.

AT: How do you describe your research?

JJ: We are trying to get the overview of how the different parts of the immune system interact to lead to juvenile arthritis. So instead of taking just one aspect of the disease and studying it in depth, we are trying to see the entire forest. We are finding clues to JRA in the innate immune system, which means it’s very possible that diseases like this are not autoimmune diseases at all, but chronic auto-inflammatory diseases. That gives us new targets for therapies. It’s almost like what people must have felt when they realized that it is the Earth that moves and the sun that stands still. When you hypothesize that, then things that didn’t make sense start to make sense.

AT: How does music influence your research?

JJ: Research is essentially creative. Appreciation of the creative impulse has driven both my love of the arts and my passion for science. Creative ways of solving problems require the same skill set, whether it’s how you write a four-part fugue or how you unravel a complex disease. 

AT: Do you play music in your office?

JJ: Yes, in both ways. I actually have a guitar here, and I play CDs – Mozart is a favorite. I like a Baroque lutenist, Silvius Leopold Weiss, because I play his music on the guitar. There are a few pieces I can’t listen to. Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” quartet is amazing, but I can’t work with it on because I am compelled to stop and listen. And I’ve tried to work to any number of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, but find myself singing along.