The Lupus Research Alliance (LRA), a private funder of lupus research, in collaboration with Genentech, has announced the inaugural recipients of the Lupus Research Alliance-Genentech Award on Immune Resetting Therapies for Lupus (LGA-IRT). The newly launched programme is designed to advance scientific understanding of engineered cell therapies that aim to reset the immune system and potentially deliver long-lasting remission for people living with lupus.

The programme focuses on chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy, an innovative treatment approach that has already demonstrated significant success in oncology and is now being explored for severe lupus cases. Early clinical studies involving CD19-targeted CAR-T cell therapies have shown promising results, with some patients achieving deep remission and discontinuing conventional lupus medications after failing to respond to standard treatments.

CAR-T cell therapy works by genetically reprogramming a patient’s own T cells to identify and eliminate B cells, which are known to play a central role in lupus-related immune dysfunction. While the therapy has shown encouraging outcomes, researchers are still working to understand how immune resetting occurs, why remission duration varies among patients and whether the disease may eventually recur.

Commenting on the initiative, Teodora Staeva, Chief Scientific Officer of the Lupus Research Alliance, said the programme is intended to strengthen the scientific foundation needed to transform early clinical breakthroughs into effective long-term therapies. She noted that the collaboration with Genentech aims to improve understanding of immune reset mechanisms and help make future therapies safer, more durable and accessible for lupus patients.

Under the programme, selected researchers will receive funding of USD 150,000 per year for up to two years to support studies focused on advancing immune-resetting therapies.

Among the funded projects, Anne Davidson from The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research will investigate why some lupus patients relapse after CAR-T therapy. Her research will use lupus mouse models to examine whether certain antibody-producing plasma cells survive treatment and whether inflammation re-emerges following therapy, potentially limiting long-term remission.

Panagiotis Garantziotis from Uniklinikum Erlangen will study blood and bone marrow samples from patients treated with CAR-T cells and compare them with patients receiving standard B cell-targeting therapies. The research aims to better understand how CAR-T therapy reshapes the immune system and why it may produce stronger clinical responses.

Meanwhile, Eric Meffre of Stanford University will explore how CAR-T therapy restores immune tolerance in lupus patients. His work will investigate whether the therapy prevents the immune system from generating harmful autoantibody-producing B cells or strengthens regulatory mechanisms that suppress them after formation.

Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease in which the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissues and organs, including the kidneys, heart, lungs, skin, blood and joints. The disease disproportionately affects women, particularly between the ages of 15 and 45, and is more prevalent among Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian and Pacific Islander populations.

The Lupus Research Alliance stated that the initiative reflects the growing momentum behind immune-resetting therapies as a potential breakthrough approach for difficult-to-treat autoimmune diseases and reinforces ongoing efforts to accelerate the development of safer and more effective treatments for lupus worldwide.