Lupus Insight Prize Archives

Tag: Lupus Insight Prize

LRA Awards 2025 Lupus Insight Prize to Dr. Deepak Rao for Uncovering Key Drivers of Immune Imbalance in Lupus

The Lupus Research Alliance (LRA) proudly awarded the 2025 Lupus Insight Prize today to highly respected immunologist Deepak Rao, MD, PhD, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. The Prize recognizes Dr. Rao’s pioneering and widely reported findings published in Nature, which reveal a previously unknown imbalance in key immune cells that contribute to […] Read More

Gut Bacteria May Hold the Key to New Lupus Treatments

A groundbreaking study led by Martin Kriegel, MD, PhD, Chief of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology at the University of Münster, Germany, has revealed that certain gut bacteria can escape the gut and stimulate harmful immune activity in lupus patients. The research, published in the prestigious journal Science Translational Medicine, sheds light on the mechanisms behind […] Read More

Highlights from ACR Convergence 2024: Groundbreaking LRA-Funded Research and Innovative Therapies

The Lupus Research Alliance (LRA) is proud to showcase the groundbreaking work of its funded researchers presented at the 2024 ACR Convergence meeting held this November in Washington, D.C. From novel steroid-sparing strategies to precision immunotherapies, this year’s presentations promise to bring new insights and transformative approaches to systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and related autoimmune […] Read More

Groundbreaking Study Funded in Part by LRA Sheds Light on Unconventional Cause of Inflammation in Lupus

A groundbreaking study partly funded by the Lupus Research Alliance (LRA), published in Immunity, uncovered an unexpected contributor to inflammation in lupus. Led by Drs. Virginia Pascual and Simone Caielli from Weill Cornell Medical College, the research identified a specific subset of monocytes (a type of immune cell) that release an inflammatory protein called IL-1β. […] Read More

Researchers Discover How Gut Bacteria Can Trigger Autoimmunity

August 4, 2022 Immunologists have found that a certain gut bacteria escapes from the intestines to trigger inflammation that can lead to autoimmune diseases. A new study published in Nature provides an insight into how particular gut bacteria evolve over time through a phenomenon called ‘within-host evolution’. The new findings open the door for the […] Read More

Helping Overcome Lupus Effects on Mental Health

Updated March 11, 2022 Neuropsychiatric lupus affects 80-90% of people with lupus. In a video series hosted by the Young Leaders Board of the Lupus Research Alliance, Dr. Meggan Mackay explains How to know if you have neuropsychiatric lupus and offers ways to improve cognitive health. Dr. Mackay also describes a clinical trial she is […] Read More

LRA-Supported Researcher Finds Similarity between COVID-19 and Lupus Flares

October 21, 2020 In a recent study published in Nature Immunology, LRA Lupus Insight Prize recipient Dr. Ignacio Sanz and colleagues found that the immune response in patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 was different from that in patients with mild disease, and that the immune response in severely ill COVID-19 patients was more like a lupus flare. They saw that among severely ill COVID-19 patients, some immune cells called B cells reproduced unchecked, and […] Read More

The Lupus Research Alliance Presents 2020 Lupus Insight Prize Recipient – Dr. Jane Salmon

New York, NY. September 25, 2020 — The Lupus Research Alliance presented its 2020 Lupus Insight Prize to Jane Salmon, MD for her work in improving the health of pregnant women with lupus and antiphospholipid syndrome. The prize was formally “presented” to Dr. Salmon by LRA Scientific Advisory Board Chair Gary Koretzky, MD during a […] Read More

2018 LRA Lupus Insight Prize Recipient Receives $15 M Grant from NIH to Study Lupus Effects on the Brain

July 27, 2020 The Lupus Research Alliance congratulates 2018 Lupus Insight Prize recipient Betty Diamond, MD and the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research on being awarded $15 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease to study brain dysfunction linked to lupus. Dr. Diamond will use the five-year grant to study a receptor […] Read More

2019 Lupus Insight Prize Awarded to Ignacio Sanz, MD

Thinking outside the box” is jargon that often rings hollow—but not so when it’s used to describe the ideas generated by Ignacio Sanz, MD, world-renowned expert on autoimmunity. Dr. Sanz recently discovered that certain little-understood immune system cells are a major source of the harmful proteins that promote lupus symptoms. This breakthrough has the potential […] Read More

New Research Identifies a Key to Neuropsychiatric Lupus

August 12, 2019 A specific antibody target has been identified as causing neuropsychiatric symptoms of lupus, according to a study at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University published in the Journal of Neuroscience. These common symptoms include cognitive impairment, meaning that the person has trouble thinking, learning or remembering. Other symptoms include mood changes, seizures, headaches […] Read More

LRA’s 2019 Lupus Insight Prize Awarded to Dr. Ignacio Sanz

Boston, MA. June 19, 2019. The Lupus Research Alliance has awarded its 2019 Lupus Insight Prize to Ignacio Sanz, MD, for discovering that certain little-understood immune system cells are a major source of the harmful proteins that promote lupus symptoms. His work could spark new treatments for the disease and help doctors determine which patients […] Read More