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Lupus research takes center stage at ACR/ARHP annual meeting
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CHICAGO — Despite its long history of therapeutic setbacks and disappointing clinical trials, particularly in recent years, lupus has emerged as one of the ‘hot topics’ of research and drug development at the ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting, with a promising array of phase 2 trials.
“Lupus drug development has had starts and stops, some of which has been discouraging with some recent announcements of phase 3 trial failures, but at [the ACR/ARHP] meeting, there is also a lot of excitement around some phase 2 trials that are showing hope with new agents as well,” Susan M. Manzi, MD, MPH, medical director of the Lupus Foundation of America, and director of the Lupus Center of Excellence at Allegheny Health Network, told Healio Rheumatology. “Through the support of the Lupus Foundation of America, a group of investigators have gotten together over the past few years and actually gone to the FDA to discuss the crisis in drug development and the need to change the way we design and implement clinical trials.”
“It is such an exciting time in lupus research,” Stevan W. Gibson, president and CEO of the Lupus Foundation of America said in an interview. “We are working with over 30 companies who are trying to develop a treatment therapy; we are also working with the FDA to help those companies ensure that they have patient input that could be shared with the FDA to demonstrate that these therapies do work for people with lupus.”
He added, “Patients are at the center of all our research efforts. We have a wonderful resource center on our website at Lupus.org that is viewed by patients internationally and we hope that more patients will be able to use this to help them deal with this horrific disease.”