New Round of Lupus Research Institute Awards Brings Promise of More Breakthroughs

Recipients of the latest round of highly competitive, 3-year $300,000 grants will be working at the laboratory bench as well as through clinical studies to pursue their unique and powerful hypotheses on why, in lupus, the immune system so tragically turns against the body it is designed to defend.

The 12 were selected following a rigorous review by the LRI Novel Research Peer Review Committee led by top lupus scientists from around the country and co-chaired by Mark Shlomchik, MD, PhD, of Yale University School of Medicine, and David Pisetsky, MD, PhD, of Duke University Medical Center.

The scientists awarded the 3-year, $300,000 grants are working in the following key areas:

Genetics of Lupus

It’s clear now that the genes a person inherits can make him or her more susceptible to lupus. Identifying these genes and figuring out how they cause disease is a major challenge in lupus research today.

Nir Hacohen, PhD
Massachusetts General Hospital

Marianthi Kiriakidou, MD
University of Pennsylvania

Gender Matters in Lupus

While females are much more likely than males to get lupus—nine women for every one male is affected—illness that does develop in males tends to be particularly severe. One LRI-funded researcher is aiming to identify the genes that underpin male lupus.

Betty Tsao, PhD
University of California, LA

The Skin’s Role in Lupus

Much about the role of the skin in lupus is poorly understood, from why sunlight exposure is a trigger to what causes the skin response to stimulate a broader system-wide (systemic) lupus in some people and not in others. An LRI-funded researcher has a novel idea on what may be happening.

Vicki Kelley, PhD
Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston

Why the Lupus Immune System Reacts to its Own DNA

The blueprint for what makes us each unique—DNA and RNA—is carried inside the nucleus of each of our cells. Normally, our immune systems deftly distinguish our own DNA and RNA from that of foreign invaders such as viruses and bacteria. But in people with lupus, the immune system reacts to its own DNA and RNA as if these blueprint “chips” were the enemy that required extermination. What prompts these cases of misidentification? Tantalizing research indicates that proteins called Toll-Like Receptors (TLRs), which normally recognize DNA and RNA only from infectious pathogens such as viruses, may be to blame. Three LRI investigators will dig deeper.

Yorgo Modis, PhD
Yale University

Gregory Barton, PhD
University of California, Berkeley

Matthias Wabl, PhD
University of California, SF

Immune System Function—Signaling

At some point in lupus, messages are sent among cells that lead the immune system to malfunction. Two 2007 grants aim to understand and interrupt this flawed communication.

Tracy McGaha, PhD
Temple University, Philadelphia

Anne M. Stevens, MD, PhD
Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center, Seattle

Immune System Function—B Cells

The body’s B cells, or B lymphocytes, mature in the bone marrow. When stimulated by an antigen, they develop into cells that make antibodies. And over the past few years, evidence that they play a central role in the cause and development of lupus—by making antibodies to the body’s own DNA—has been growing.

Thomas Rothstein, MD, PhD
The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, NY

Jennifer Anolik, MD, PhD
University of Rochester, NY

Loren Erickson, PhD
University of Virginia