IRIS Integral Rheumatology & Immunology Specialists

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IRIS Integral Rheumatology & Immunology Specialists Our practice is committed towards treating all patients and improving their quality of life. This is Dr. Valenzuela’s 2nd state-of-the-art practice.

The first is located in Plantation, Florida. Both offices are committed towards treating all patients and improving their quality of life. As leaders in our field, we continually contribute to the development of new treatments and protocols through our contribution in clinical studies. Specialized in complex cases of Arthritic and Rheumatic diseases, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Osteoporosis, Carpal tunnel, Gout, Sjogrens syndrome, Lupus (SLE) and more.

Bone is living tissue. Your body breaks it down and rebuilds it every day, and in early adulthood those two processes st...
10/20/2026

Bone is living tissue. Your body breaks it down and rebuilds it every day, and in early adulthood those two processes stay in balance.

Age, menopause, some medications and inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis can shift that balance. Breakdown starts to win. Bone grows thinner and more porous, and a fall from standing height can fracture a hip, a vertebra or a wrist.

October 20 is World Osteoporosis Day. We want our community to know that a simple test can detect bone loss before it causes a fracture. A DXA scan gives a T-score, which compares your bone density with that of a healthy young adult.

We review that result with you and decide together whether you need follow-up, changes in diet and activity, or medication.

140 SW 84th Ave B, Plantation, FL 33324.
IRIS Rheumatology & Immunology Specialists | IRIS R&D

10/19/2026

Be with the patients. Speak to them. Understand them. Dr. Kathy Perez learned medicine that way at 18, long before she had a title.

As a student she saw everything a physician sees, and she says it shaped the person she is. You notice it in the way she listens.

Today she puts that same energy into clinical research, hoping investigational options like cell therapy reach more of the people who need them, here and around the world.

140 SW 84th Ave B, Plantation, FL 33324.
IRIS Rheumatology & Immunology Specialists | IRIS R&D

10/15/2026

The first patient in the world to receive allogeneic NK therapy for rheumatoid arthritis was treated at our research site. At the Florida Society of Rheumatology, Dr. Valenzuela shared what happened next.

Six sentinel patients with severe, multi-drug resistant disease. After the protocol, methotrexate and steroids were tapered off. As of April, those patients had been off medication for 18 months, and their CDAI and DAS28 scores were still down at the six-month mark.

We want to be careful here. It is a small cohort, it is early, and durability beyond 18 months is still an open question. Follow-up continues. But it was presented at EULAR, and it is the first time we have seen this in RA.

140 SW 84th Ave B, Plantation, FL 33324.
IRIS Rheumatology & Immunology Specialists | IRIS R&D

10/12/2026

Between 14 and 20 days. That is how long the full protocol takes in the allogeneic NK trials at our research site: screening, three days of lymphodepletion, three infusions of cells. All of it ambulatory, all of it managed by the rheumatologist.

But the part of Dr. Valenzuela's talk at the Florida Society of Rheumatology that stayed with us came after the protocol. He asked the specialty to stop waiting for patients to become refractory and start recognizing them earlier, before the damage accumulates. He calls it shifting to the left the time of meaningful intervention.

Investigational therapy, currently under clinical trial.

140 SW 84th Ave B, Plantation, FL 33324.
IRIS Rheumatology & Immunology Specialists | IRIS R&D

10/08/2026

CAR-T works. Getting it to a patient is another story.

You need a hematology-oncology department, a team that can manage ICANS and cytokine release syndrome, and infrastructure most rheumatology practices do not have. As Dr. Valenzuela said at the Florida Society of Rheumatology, that complexity is real. It should not be what decides who gets treated.

The allogeneic NK trials at our research site were designed around that problem: comparable efficacy, delivered where rheumatologists already practice.

140 SW 84th Ave B, Plantation, FL 33324.
IRIS Rheumatology & Immunology Specialists | IRIS R&D

10/05/2026

Dr. Valenzuela M.D. F.A.C.R. spoke at the Florida Society of Rheumatology about NK cell therapy for autoimmune disease.

For years we treated the NK cell as a curiosity from immunology class. We knew it existed, we did not know what it was for. Today it is the working element in two clinical trials at our research site, one with allogeneic NK cells and one with CAR-NK, alongside Artiva and Nkarta.

The way Dr. Valenzuela puts it: we are replacing drugs with cells, and using drugs to help those cells do their job. It is a different way of thinking about a field that, for refractory patients, has spent a long time rotating between therapies rather than reaching remission.

140 SW 84th Ave B, Plantation, FL 33324.
IRIS Rheumatology & Immunology Specialists | IRIS R&D

09/28/2026

Part 4 | Lupus Forum expert panel, September 2026

A cell primed in the lymph node can exert its effect somewhere else entirely.

Dr. Valenzuela describes lupus as a dynamic process rather than a static one, with cells carrying their message through the lymphatic and circulatory systems and acting at a distance from where the encounter took place.

09/24/2026

Part 3 | Lupus Forum expert panel, September 2026

Single activation. Single inhibition. That has been the pattern.

In this segment our founder Dr. Guillermo Valenzuela reviews the lupus clinical development landscape, including approved agents and those still in process, and explains why modulation represents a shift in how the field is thinking.

A case report we published this year covers one patient in our care, someone with rheumatoid arthritis who we treated wi...
09/22/2026

A case report we published this year covers one patient in our care, someone with rheumatoid arthritis who we treated with tofacitinib and who also had alopecia universalis. Their hair grew back completely, and that outcome had nothing to do with why we prescribed the drug in the first place.

The scope of that report is exactly one patient. It doesn't predict what happens to anyone else taking the same medication, and it isn't a basis for a treatment decision in another case. It's a documented observation, which is all a case report is meant to be.

Perez, Robinson, Shah, and Valenzuela wrote it up on our team and published it in Annals of Case Reports, 2026.

Questions about your own treatment belong with your physician, not with a single case report.

140 SW 84th Ave B, Plantation, FL 33324.
IRIS Rheumatology & Immunology Specialists | IRIS R&D

09/20/2026

Part 2 | Lupus Forum expert panel, September 2026

Dr. Valenzuela connects the mechanism to lupus.

Antigen presenting cells present antigens. Autoreactive T cells would normally leave the lymph node and act. Regulate that egress and the process is reduced at the source.

The part that often gets left out: it is not only immune cells doing this. Endothelial cells, pericytes and fibroblasts regulate cell passage too.

Address

140 SW 84th Avenue, Ste B
Plantation, FL
33324

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Telephone

+19542890015

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