Melanie Smith, MD, PhD

Melanie Smith is an Assistant Attending Physician at the Hospital for Special Surgery.

Smith conducts basic science and translational research in inflammatory arthritis with a focus on rheumatoid arthritis. She studies how cells that make up the healthy joint lining change with rheumatoid arthritis in order to identify novel therapeutic targets.

Previously, she was conducting research in the labs of Laura Donlin at HSS and Alexander Rudensky at Memorial Sloan Kettering.

Protein structure and interactions were the focus of Melanie’s PhD/MD research. Her work on the distinction between properly made and improperly made proteins and how the cell disposes of those that are improperly made has important implications for many disease processes including the survival of cancer cells and immune system activation.

She completed her MD/PhD from the University of California, San Franciso with a PhD in Biophysics.