Affiliation: Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda

Olcay Y Jones, MD Ph.D. is a physician-scientist in medicine and immunology. She is a Pediatric Rheumatologist caring for children with autoimmune, autoinflammatory, and immune dysregulation illnesses. She has engaged in multicenter interventional trials for the treatment of lupus, dermatomyositis, and juvenile arthritis in the last two decades. Her contributions include a case report representing the 1st allogeneic non-myeloablative bone marrow transplant of a child with vasculitis under the mentorship of late Dr. Robert A Good. She has further investigated stem cell treatment in preclinical lupus models. Those studies involved systemic and targeted delivery of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) toward clinical trials to treat severe autoimmune diseases soon. Her current interests also include Long COVID in light of systems theory through cross-disciplinary collaborations to explore condition pathogenesis and the role of MSC (https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm11030572). As a federal employee working for the Department of Defense, she is dedicated to patient advocacy and large-scale collaborations toward developing open-source knowledge for patient-centered research.