Victoria P. Werth, MS, MD

Dr. Victoria Werth is a Professor of Dermatology and Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Dermatology at the Philadelphia Veterans Administration Hospital. Dr. Werth earned her medical degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. She completed a residency in internal medicine at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, and dermatology residency and immunodermatology fellowship at New York University School of Medicine in New York. She joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 and has developed an internationally recognized program in autoimmune skin diseases.

She is a co-founder of the Rheumatologic Dermatology Society and previous president of the group. She is co-founder of the Medical Dermatology Society, and a recipient of their lifetime achievement award. She initiated the combined internal medicine/dermatology residency program in the U.S., which has successfully trained prominent leaders in complex medical dermatology. She has a longstanding interest in clinical and translational research pertaining to cutaneous lupus erythematosus, with a focus on improving the treatment and outcomes. She has developed and validated disease severity tools now used in many international trials in lupus erythematosus, with a goal to advancing evidence for current and new therapeutics targeting these diseases. Her laboratory studies include studies of the mechanisms of cutaneous lupus, biomarker studies in cutaneous lupus examining the heterogeneity of the disease that relate to pathogenesis, and ultraviolet light effects on skin. Recent clinical studies have examined mechanistic effects of therapeutics in CLE, as well as subset-specific expression of cytokine signatures. Her work has been funded by the Dermatology Foundation, NIH, the VA, numerous autoimmune disease foundations, and industry.