Speaker

Dr. Abdul Razzaque Ahmed is a Professor of Dermatology at the Tufts University School of Medicine and Director of the Center for Blistering Disease in Boston. He graduated from the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences. In the US he was trained in dermatology, and clinical allergy & immunology. He received a Doctor of Science degree in molecular immunology from Harvard University. His major contributions to autoimmune blistering diseases include identifying the MHC Class II genes associated with pemphigus and pemphigoid, beta4 and alpha6 integrins as pathogenic autoantigens in mucous membrane pemphigoid and pathogenic IgG4 and nonpathogenic IgG1 autoantibodies in pemphigus vulgaris. Amongst his many clinical contributions is the use the combination of IVIg and Rituximab in treating autoimmune blistering diseases, resulting in long-term clinical remissions (NEJM 2015; 373: 2693-4). He has authored over 400 peer-reviewed publications and received Lifetime Achievement Awards from scientific organizations and dermatology societies worldwide. He received “Doctor of the Year” Award from the International Pemphigus and Pemphigoid Foundation in 2012. In 2016 he was the recipient of the “Walter Lever Memorial Lecture Award” by the Tufts University School of Medicine Department of Dermatology. In 2019 the Royal College of Physicians of the United Kingdom made Dr. Ahmed a Fellow. This award was based on seven important discoveries that he had made. The Royal College emphasized that these discoveries were important not only the US and UK, but to people all over the world, and that these were landmark and milestone discoveries. In 2022 the International Congress on Autoimmunity gave him a “Lifetime Achievement Award” for contributions to autoimmunity. The basis of this award was that the Committee of the Congress in contacting dermatologists in 28 countries discovered that the Ahmed Protocol produced long-term sustained remissions in autoimmune blistering diseases. Such sustained long-term remissions have not been possible in any other autoimmune disease. Additionally in 2022, Newsweek Magazine conducted a discrete survey of several hundred dermatology in the US and asked them to identify and provide a numerical score for the top dermatologists in the US. The data was analyzed by a statistical company in Europe. Dermatologists who had the top 50 scores were listed according to their score. The remaining 51-150 were listed alphabetically. Dr. Ahmed was number 39 amongst the top 50 dermatologists in the entire United States.

He is an attending in the Dermatology Service at the Boston VA Healthcare System. In the Dermatology Clinic he teaches Dermatology Residents from the Harvard, Tufts, and Boston University Dermatology Residency Programs.