Erinn S. Kellner, MD

I am the current director of the Transition and Adult Immunodeficiency Program within the Division of Allergy and Immunology at Cincinnati Children’s..

I always loved the field of science and understanding why things happened and why someone would become sick. Fortunately, while in college, I worked in a basic immunology and rheumatology lab with some incredible lifelong mentors, Dr. Westley Reeves and Dr. Pui Lee. This experience made me fall in love with the complexity of the immune system.

Later, I found the field of allergy, immunology and immune deficiency and saw patients who had an interesting overlap of both immune deficiency and autoimmunity. This field allowed me the unique opportunity to see patients from childhood through adulthood. I realized then the emerging need for trained experts in the area of adult immune deficiency.

My specialty is in allergy and clinical immunology, specifically immune deficiency, immune dysregulation and eosinophilic conditions. I believe that every patient and family is uniquely different. Listening to their story is powerful in determining a diagnosis and treatment approach. I work closely with other subspecialists at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and feel fortunate to have an amazing diagnostic immunology lab to help with diagnosis and treatment.

During my Allergy and Immunology Fellowship, I was honored to be the Visiting Immunology Scholars Awardee at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. I applied through the Immune Deficiency Foundation and was fortunate to be awarded two weeks with one of the world’s leading experts in adult primary immune deficiency, Dr. Charlotte Cunningham-Rundles. She has served as a career model and also an example for the clinic I am developing.

I was also a participant in the Clinical Immunology Society School in Primary Immunodeficiency Diseases, and a participant in the Clinical Immunology Society Diagnostic School in Primary Immunodeficiency, in which I was selected to go to a conference to improve my immunology skills further.

I won the American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) Fellow-in-Training Basic and the Clinical Immunology Section Abstract Award for my abstract titled “Cellular defects in CVID patients with chronic lung disease in the USIDNET registry.” I gave an oral presentation of this abstract at the 2018 AAAAI national meeting. This same abstract also won the 2018 Fellow Research Award from the Illinois Society of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology and was later published in the Journal of Clinical Immunology. These experiences set the stage for pursuing further training at Cincinnati Children’s through a Clinical Immunodeficiency Fellowship and becoming faculty of the Division of Allergy and Immunology.

In my research, I am seeking a better understanding of the pathophysiology and treatment options for patients with common variable immunodeficiency who get an underlying interstitial lung disease, called granulomatous-lymphocytic interstitial lung disease.

In my free time, I enjoy cooking, gardening, hiking, traveling and spending time with my husband and my dog.