The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) of the National Institutes of Health recently announced that Baylor Scott & White Research Institute will be home to one of four new Centers of Research Translation, or CORTs. NIAMS will fund $8.5 million over five years toward the center's research, which aims to better understand the development of severe lupus in children and could ultimately lead to new personalized treatments.
CORTs are team science programs designed to address translational research challenges in diseases or conditions within the mission of the NIAMS and aim to bring research from bench to bedside. Virginia Pascual, MD, will lead the CORT at the Baylor Institute for Immunology Research, part of Baylor Scott & White Research Institute, to understand how the changes in gene expression contribute to the development of lupus. She'll build on her previous pioneering work to correlate lupus disease activity with certain gene expression profiles.
The Center for Lupus Research will focus on novel genomic technologies and bioinformatic resources to monitor pediatric patients who suffer from severe forms of lupus, potentially leading to new interventional strategies and personalized treatments, Dr. Pascual said.
"Lupus is a complex autoimmune disease that can affect multiple organs," Dr. Pascual said. "We expect that knowledge gained through the implementation of these studies will permit us to better understand what drives the disease in each individual patient in order to apply personalized treatments, which should have a greater chance of being successful."
CORTs each contain highly meritorious translational research projects, one or more research cores and an administrative core, according to NIAMS. Combined, the projects and cores will generate new knowledge to improve understanding of human pathophysiology. They aim to identify new therapeutic targets, develop more effective treatments or diagnostics, or design novel prevention strategies for human disease.
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