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Biography
Dr. Cunningham was raised in “Chocolatetown, USA” (Hershey, Pennsylvania). She received her undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and a Masters degree in Molecular Medicine from Boston University. She earned both her PhD (2004) and MD (2006) at The Pennsylvania State University. She then entered the ABIM’s clinician-scientist track at The Medical University of South Carolina, where she completed her IM residency and rheumatology fellowship training in 2012. She subsequently joined the faculty in the Division of Rheumatology and Immunology, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2019.
Dr. Cunningham was among 10 nationally to receive a Distinguished Fellow Award from the American College of Rheumatology (ACR), and was recently awarded the Mary Betty Stevens Young Investigator Prize from the Lupus Foundation of America. Dr. Cunningham has an interest in women’s health issues with a focus on sex bias in autoimmunity. Her basic science research focuses on the role of estrogen receptor alpha variants in modulating Toll-like receptor signaling and the inflammatory response in lupus. She has been funded on a CTSA KL2 award, a 5yr K08 award from NIH NIAMS, a Doris Duke Foundation Award, and 2 ACR Rheumatology Research Fund bridge awards. Most recently, her first R01 was funded to extend her work on the role of nuclear hormone receptors in lupus.