He developed the Arthritic Clinical Intervention Program and was lead investigator for many of the early clinical trials with biologics for rheumatoid arthritis (RA). He spearheaded the pivotal Phase 1, 2 and 3 trials of etanercept for RA which resulted in this biologic agent being the first biologic approved by the United States Food and Drug administration for treating RA. While at UAB he and other colleagues developed two major research databases. These were the NIH funded Consortium for the Longitudinal Evaluation of African Americans with early RA (CLEAR) registry, and the investigator-initiated clinical trial (funded by NIH and industry) Treatment of early aggressive RA (TEAR). These large databases provided enormous resources for data for junior investigators to launch successful academic careers. During this timeframe he continued with NIH funded translational research in musculoskeletal and autoimmune research. Major RA projects included: the NIAMS (and industry) funded Randomized Comparative Effectiveness in RA (RACER) database; NHLBI funded “Evaluation of specific markers of Rheumatoid Arthritis, Inflammation, Thrombogenesis and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease and Total Mortality” using the database and biorepository from the Women’s Health Initiative; and the NIH and industry funded Accelerated Medicines Partnership (AMP) in RA. For the past 10 years he was a member of the NIH funded Vasculitis Clinical Research Consortium (VCRC) and under his leadership at the University of Pittsburgh participated in multiple longitudinal disease registries and investigator-initiated trials involving patients with vasculitis.