From our contacts with scientists at the world’s most prestigious universities, medical schools, and hospitals, we select and support research projects with the greatest potential for treating, curing, and preventing lupus. But we also engage the scientific community through lupus conferences, advocate for lupus patients, and strengthen awareness in our society about the need for continued research.
The Lupus Research Alliance sponsors or co-sponsors key scientific collaboration, such as Forum for Discovery, which bring leading researchers together to discuss the latest findings and help coordinate research activity.
We bring the needs of the lupus patient to the attention of our federal legislators — the decision makers who determine the future of medical research and healthcare.
We strive to influence health policies and budget allocations that are in the best interests of the lupus community.
Over the years, we have achieved a number of significant results. With the support of the national lupus community, we have been able to convince Congress to provide millions in funding to advance lupus research and appropriate $10 million to alleviate racial disparities among underserved populations. Most recently, our efforts resulted in an additional $3 billion for biomedical research funded by the National Institutes of Health as well as $5 million to continue the Lupus Research Program at the Department of Defense we helped establish in 2017.
Through our Legislative Action Center, we offer tools to help individual advocates urge Congress to support the research necessary to deliver urgently-needed new treatments and a cure to people with lupus.
Because clinical studies are essential for delivering safer and more effective treatments, the Lupus Research Alliance takes a leadership role in driving clinical research. In fact, we are the only voluntary lupus health organization to organize and fund a clinical trials network – the Lupus Clinical Investigators Network, known as LuCIN – to conduct multi-center trials.
The Lupus Research Alliance is also a national sponsor of AWARE for All, a free program that educates and empowers the public to consider participating in clinical trials. And we provide the only website dedicated to lupus clinical research – LupusTrials.org – where you can search for and learn about trials in your area.
Innovator Award
The Dr. William E. Paul Distinguished Innovator Award in Lupus and Autoimmunity addresses the current lack of treatments in development that could arrest or reverse the disease. The only privately funded lupus awards of this scale, the $1 million award challenges exceptional scientists to uncover the root causes of lupus and present a compelling vision of how these discoveries would begin the drive to a cure, as well as prevention strategies.
Novel research
The Novel Research Grant program provides early-stage support with $300,000 grants over three years, used for investigations into the fundamental mechanisms of lupus and its complications, and the explorations of novel targets, pathways, and technologies. The aim is to stimulate the study of underexplored avenues that can lead to the development of safer and more effective treatments.
Translational research
Under our Target Identification in Lupus (TIL) grant program, investigators receive a three-year, up-to-$600,000 award, to remove the barriers to new treatments. All research funded under the TIL program is designed for “translational” research – discoveries that become useful therapies in the near future, moving quickly from the laboratory to the patient’s bedside.
