Ioannis Parodis receives international grant for lupus research

“I am very grateful for the grant and for the opportunity to advance research in this field together with international colleagues. Lupus is a highly complex disease, and today it is difficult to predict which patients will respond to a particular treatment,” says Ioannis Parodis, researcher at the Department of Medicine, Solna, Karolinska Institutet. 

Lupus, or systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), is a chronic autoimmune disease that can manifest in many different ways and affect several organs in the body. Although new treatments have improved care, it remains difficult to predict how the disease will develop in an individual patient and which treatment will be most effective. 

Ioannis Parodis currently leads the ULTIMA project (Untangling Lupus Through Integrative Multi-Omics Approaches), which aims to identify biological patterns that can predict treatment response, disease progression, and the risk of disease flares. 

The goal is tailored treatments

The ULTIMA research team will use the grant to analyse a broad range of biological markers, including proteins, autoantibodies, and molecular signals from blood, urine, and exhaled breath, together with clinical data and data reported directly by people living with lupus.

“By combining advanced biological analyses with clinical data, we hope to identify patterns that make it possible to tailor treatment to each patient. In the long term, this could help reduce disease flares, lower the risk of organ damage, and improve the quality of life for people living with lupus,” says Ioannis Parodis. 

The ULTIMA project is carried out in collaboration with leading researchers from Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy. The research team combines expertise in clinical research, immunology, molecular biology, and bioinformatics to improve understanding of the biological mechanisms that drive disease progression in lupus.

This news article is based on a press release from the Lupus Research Alliance.