Javad Wahadat, PhD student at the department of Immunology and Pediatric Rheumatology won the Young Investigators Award at the 2020 Pediatric Rheumatology European Association (PReS) congress for his study on the effect of standard of care medication used by children with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) on type I interferon activation.
Children with SLE frequently experience a chronic activation of their type I interferons, which are proteins that are normally produced when a person is infected with a virus. Despite standard of care therapy, systemic interferon activation remains high in a subset of the SLE patients, hinting towards the involvement of multiple pathways in this process. So far data on the effect of medication on the type I interferon activation are limited. Javad studied the effect of these medications on various routes that induce type I interferon activation in an in vitro model and found that the persistent interferon activation in SLE patients might be caused by other routes than are initially targeted by these medications.