Identified: Regulatory Defect that Drives Lupus

LRI-Funded Scientist Dr. Harvey Cantor Leads Discovery

Saturday, February 12, 2011

“Our LRI funds allowed us to carry out the early experiments that led to the definition of the CD8 suppressor cells.” – Dr. Harvey Cantor

Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Cambridge, Mass., in collaboration with Jackson Laboratory scientists, have identified a regulatory defect that drives lupus.

Correcting the defect “may represent an effective therapeutic approach to systemic lupus erythematosus-like autoimmune disease,” the researchers state in their research paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research team was led by Harvey Cantor, M.D., chair of the department of cancer immunology and AIDS at Dana-Farber, in collaboration with the laboratory of Jackson Professor Derry Roopenian, Ph.D.

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