Stanford scientists awarded $18 million to accelerate rheumatoid arthritis, lupus research

P.J. Utz and William Robinson will spearhead efforts to accelerate research on two immune disorders: rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

P.J. Utz

The National Institutes of Health has awarded two groups of Stanford scientists grants that could exceed $18 million to help speed up research on arthritis and lupus.

The NIH is funding a total of 11 research groups nationwide to establish the Accelerating Medicines Partnership in Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus Network. NIH director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, who initiated the five-year, $41.6 million program, described the network as “the first phase of an unprecedented approach to identify pathways that are critical to disease progression in rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.”

One grant, for approximately $12 million over five years, went to establish a leadership center for the network. The center, housed at Stanford, will be responsible for overall coordination of the activities of the groups in the consortium. P.J. Utz, MD, professor of immunology and rheumatology, is the center’s principal investigator. Investigators at University of Colorado, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, UC-San Diego and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center are also actively involved.

Another grant, estimated at $6 million over five years, was awarded to establish the Stanford Technology for Accelerating Medicines Partnerships Center. Led by principal investigator William Robinson, MD, PhD, associate professor of immunology and rheumatology, the STAMP Center will apply cutting-edge analytic technologies that have been largely invented at Stanford to study skin, blood and kidney samples from lupus patients and synovial tissue and blood from rheumatoid arthritis patients.

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2023 ISSUE 3

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