Alvin F. Wells, MD, PhD

Alvin F. Wells, MD, PhD, is currently a practicing rheumatologist at the Rheumatology and Immunotherapy Center in Franklin, WI, where he serves as the director. He is also a visiting foreign professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Dr Wells maintains his clinical affiliation with Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC, where he is an adjunct assistant professor, and is a clinical assistant professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI. Prior to returning to private practice, he was an associate medical director at Abbott Laboratories.

Dr Wells received his MD from the University of South Florida, Tampa, and trained in Internal Medicine and in Rheumatology at Duke University, where he was a faculty member before joining Abbott. He received his PhD in Immunology from the University of South Carolina in Columbia, where he developed an animal model for reactive arthritis (previously known as Reiter’s syndrome). He was a recipient of the prestigious Fogarty Biomedical Research Award from the National Institutes of Health, which allowed him to undertake a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship at Uppsala University in Uppsala, Sweden, with Dr Lars Klareskog.

Dr Wells, who is fluent in Swedish, is an internationally renowned speaker and researcher. A member of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine and the American College of Rheumatology, he has more than 25 years of research experience focusing on chronic inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis with an emphasis on connective tissue components, inflammatory mediators, and cytokines. He has published extensively and has had research support from the Arthritis Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr Wells is the recipient of the 2003 Abbott President’s Award, and he was honored with the Merck Young Investigator Award in 2001 and the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Distinguished Alumni Award in 1999.