Immunodermatology About Us

In 1964, Robert E. Jordan, as a medical student, published a paper with Ernst H. Beutner describing their discovery that pemphigus is an autoimmune disease by demonstrating antibodies in sera of patients with pemphigus vulgaris by indirect immunofluorescence which localized to intercellular spaces of stratified squamous epithelia.(2) Autoantibodies in two blistering diseases, pemphigus and pemphigoid, were rapidly distinguished and characterized with disease specificity based on autoantibody detection and localization, and, by the late 1960s, the diagnostic utility of immunodermatology testing had been established.(3) Dermatological Immunology/Diagnostic and Laboratory Immunology became a recognized subspecialty of Dermatology with the administration of the first board examination by the American Board of Dermatology in November 1985. Immunodermatology fellowships followed.

 Dr. John J. Zone was a diplomat of the charter examination, and Dr. Kristin M. Leiferman became a diplomat in 1989. Dr. Leiferman directed the Immunodermatology Fellowship at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, until she left and came to the University of Utah in 2001. Dr. Melanie Kuechle was one of her “immunodermatology fellows.