The Lupus Research Alliance announced the four winners of its 2023 Lupus Mechanisms and Targets Award grants, which will be used to boost initiatives to develop novel therapeutics designed to treat or prevent the onset of lupus. Among the recipients were Jennifer Anolik, MD, PhD, Professor of Allergy, Immunology, and Rheumatology at the University of Rochester Medical Center, who plans to use the grant to evaluate the efficacy of sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors in reducing inflammatory CD8-positive T cells, kidney hypoxia, and injury in lupus nephritis mouse models. Betsy Barnes, PhD, Professor of Molecular Medicine at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, will use the grant to research STK25 activity—a protein kinase regulating the function of variants in the IRF5 gene, leading to the development of lupus—may differ in patients with lupus and controls with and without IRF5 variants. J. Michelle Kahlenberg, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan, hopes to use the grant to better understand how turning off Hippo signaling proteins may impact the production of type I interferons in patients with lupus—and whether these proteins may be viable therapeutic targets. Jillian Richmond, PhD, Assistant Professor of Dermatology at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, will look to evaluate whether the relationship between the skin T-cell protein CXCR6 and the skin cell protein CXCL16 may reveal new targets to slow disease progression in patients with cutaneous lupus. “These four new … awards support innovative lupus researchers whose work is poised to deliver much needed new information … with the ultimate goal of improving outcomes for [patients with] lupus,” concluded Teodora Staeva, PhD, Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of the Lupus Research Alliance.
May 25, 2023