A global research team will analyze complex biological patterns to anticipate treatment response
and flares — advancing personalized treatments for lupus

NEW YORK, Oct. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The Lupus Research Alliance (LRA), the world’s largest private funder of lupus research, today announced the 2026 Global Team Science Award (GTSA) to Ioannis Parodis, MD, PhD, Karolinska Institutet (Sweden) and his team of international multidisciplinary experts. The team will use the $3 million, multi-year grant to develop predictive tools that help identify which treatments are most likely to work for people living with lupus, forecast disease progression, and detect early signs of flares.

Lupus is an autoimmune disease that affects each person differently, making it difficult for providers to predict how the disease will progress or which treatment will be most effective. While new therapies have expanded treatment options, finding the right approach for an individual patient often remains a trial-and-error process. The awarded team’s project—named the ULTIMA project (Untangling Lupus Through Integrative Multi-Omics Approaches)—aims to uncover the biological factors that drive these differences and translate these discoveries into clinically actionable biomarkers. The goal is moving lupus care toward a precision medicine approach in which treatment decisions are guided by the underlying biology of each patient’s disease.

“Lupus remains one of the most complex autoimmune diseases, and answering its toughest questions requires collaboration across institutions, disciplines, and borders,” said Mara Lennard Richard, PhD, Scientific Program Officer at the Lupus Research Alliance. “The ULTIMA project brings together a uniquely qualified international team to investigate the biological factors that shape lupus progression, treatment response, and disease flares with the potential to generate transformative insights and lay the foundation for more precise, effective care.”

Seeking biological clues to personalize care
Researchers believe that key immune programs, including B-cell activation, interferon signaling, and interactions between immune and tissue cells, may shape how lupus develops and responds to treatment. The ULTIMA project will focus on two critical turning points in lupus—which treatments patients will respond to and how periods of stable disease can suddenly transition into flares. Exploring these points could help identify early warning signs of worsening disease and reveal which treatments are most likely to work for individual patients.

To investigate these questions, the team will analyze a wide range of biological markers from people living with lupus, including proteins, autoantibodies, gene-regulating mechanisms, and molecular signals found in blood, urine, and even exhaled breath. By combining these data with detailed clinical information collected over time, the researchers hope to identify distinct biological patterns that predict how the disease will evolve in different patients.

“By enabling more accurate patient stratification and more effective treatment selection, ULTIMA has the potential to reduce disease flares, prevent irreversible organ damage, and improve long-term outcomes and quality of life for people living with lupus,” Dr. Parodis said. “Through this, the program directly supports the Lupus Research Alliance’s mission to transform lupus research into improved therapies and better lives for people living with lupus.”

Led by Dr. Parodis, the ULTIMA project is comprised of an international team of experts, including co-primary investigators:

• Marta Eugenia Alarcón-Riquelme, MD, PhD, Fundación Pública Andaluza Progreso y Salud (Spain)
• Ronald F. Van Vollenhoven, MD, PhD, University of Amsterdam (Netherlands)
• Lorenzo Beretta, MD, Fondazione IRCCS Ca’ Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico di Milano (Italy)
• Guillermo Barturen, PhD, University of Granada (Spain)

Since its launch in 2021, as the Lupus Research Alliance’s largest multi-year grant, the GTSA program has supported nine teams from 12 countries to conduct interdisciplinary, collaborative, and highly synergistic projects that can advance breakthroughs in treatments.

To learn more about the GTSA program and the projects the Lupus Research Alliance is funding, visit LupusResearch.org/Funded-Research.

About Lupus
Lupus is a chronic, complex autoimmune disease that affects millions of people worldwide. In lupus, the immune system, meant to defend against infections, produces autoantibodies that mistake the body’s own cells as foreign, causing other immune cells to attack organs such as the kidneys, brain, heart, lungs, and skin, as well as blood and joints. Ninety percent of people with lupus are women, most often diagnosed between the ages of 15-45. Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian and Pacific Islander people are disproportionately affected by lupus.

About the Lupus Research Alliance
The Lupus Research Alliance is the largest non-governmental, non-profit funder of lupus research worldwide. The organization aims to transform treatment by funding the most innovative lupus research, fostering scientific talent, and driving discovery toward better diagnostics, improved treatments and, ultimately, a cure for lupus. Because the Lupus Research Alliance’s Board of Directors funds all administrative and fundraising costs, 100% of all donations go to support lupus research programs.

For more information or to donate to lupus research, visit the LRA at LupusResearch.org and on social media at: X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

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SOURCE Lupus Research Alliance