Felipe Andrade, MD, PhD

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD

2005 New Treatments

Currently the closest stage to a lupus cure is remission, a disease-free period that sometimes develops spontaneously and sometimes occurs with therapy.

Using peripheral blood cells from people in remission, Dr. Andrade used his LRI grant to find the molecular pathways involved when this first, natural and spontaneous type of remission occurs.

His team found 30 genes that are different between people with lupus in remission and those with ongoing disease. Some of these genes are located in regions already implicated in lupus susceptibility.

Although the finding still requires confirmation, it appears that immune cells from people in remission show decreased production on interferon-g when stimulated with type-1 interferon.

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