In 2004, ALR achieved an important public policy milestone when the Department of Defense (DoD) agreed to include lupus in the list of diseases funded through their Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program. This marked the first time lupus would be included, with 23 other topic areas, in this $50 million program. Through ALR’s continued efforts, the DoD has awarded nearly $5 million to lupus researchers since 2004. See below for details of these projects.
Prasad Devarajan, MD
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
Cincinnati, Ohio
Early Prediction Of Lupus Nephritis Using Advanced Proteomics*
Summary: About 60 percent of all patients with SLE will develop nephritis, kidney damage that dramatically reduces their survival rate. Current kidney biomarkers are not sensitive enough to identify patients with SLE nephritis early. By the time the condition is identified, permanent damage has already occurred. Along with Dr. Devarajan, ALR-funded investigator Dr. Hermine Brunner and their group plan to identify biomarker patterns in SLE nephritis that can be used to diagnose the disease early, when treatment is most likely to prevent permanent damage.
What this study means for people with lupus: The ability to identify lupus nephritis in the beginnings of the disease would enable treatment to start earlier, possibly preventing permanent damage and reducing the risk of death.
Betty Diamond, MD and Christine Grimaldi, PhD
Feinstein Institute of Medical Research
North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health Systems
Manhasset, New York
Determination of the role of estrogen receptors and estrogen regulated genes in B cell autoreactivity
Summary: Drs. Diamond and Grimaldi have designed their study to better understand why estrogen seems to affect autoimmune activity in some patients with systemic lupus, as shown in animal studies. Their study will help identify individuals whose disease is exacerbated by estrogen and those in whom their disease does not respond to estrogen.
What the study means for people with lupus. Understanding the effects of estrogen on lupus disease activity could be used to develop new ways of monitoring the disease and new therapeutic options, possibly by changing the hormonal environment in women with lupus.
Emily Gillespie, PhD
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Validating Biomarkers in Systemic Lupus*
Summary: Dr. Gillespie plans to use an existing database of microarrays from lupus patients to identify genes that best predict current disease activity as well as the future development of active lupus. Using this information, she and her team plan to build models and identify genetic signatures that correlate with outcomes in the database. They will then develop and validate real-time tests to identify the genes and groups of genes that best represent relevant global gene expression signatures of lupus activity.
What this study means for people with lupus: Faster, more accurate diagnoses and assessment of disease activity would allow patients to begin treatment sooner, perhaps avoiding some of the permanent damage that results from lupus. These genetic signatures could also help target new therapies to those patients most likely to respond.
Stephen Tomlinson, PhD
Medical University of South Carolina
Charleston, South Carolina
Complement Inhibitory Therapy of Lupus*
Summary: With the DoD grant, Dr. Tomlinson will study a new, potentially safer approach for the treatment of lupus based on the complement system, a set of proteins designed to protect against infection and help clear dead and dying cells. This cascade of proteins is activated by three pathways while inhibitors keep them in check. But in lupus, activation of the complement cascade contributes to tissue damage in the kidneys, skin and joints.
With this grant, Dr. Tomlinson will develop compounds to inhibit specific pathways of complement activation. This targeted approach will allow for ongoing normal complement functions while blocking the inappropriate activation that occurs in lupus.
What this study means for people with lupus: Once the efficacy of these inhibitors is shown in mouse models, they can be quickly translated into use for human disease and evaluated in clinical trials as a possible lupus treatment. They should also have benefits for other diseases in which activation of the complement plays a key role.
George C. Tsokos, MD
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Harvard Institutes of Medicine
Boston, Massachusetts
T Cell Lipid Rafts And Complement Ligands For Diagnosis And Monitoring Of SLE
Summary: Dr. Tsokos and his team plan to use their grant to prove two hypotheses: That the complement activation products they have discovered on T cells may alter the characteristics and function of T cells, leading to the immune reactions and inflammatory processes characteristic of systemic lupus; and that T cells that contain the complement activation products may provide sensitive biomarkers for disease activity in lupus.
What this study means for people with lupus: Proving these theories will pave the way for unique new targeted therapies for lupus, as well as a new way of diagnosing the disease and disease activity.
Click here to download our 2007 Research Portfolio Summary (pdf).
To download a pdf of the 2006 ALR grant recipients, click here.
Target Identification in Lupus 2005
|
|
