Overview

December 14, 2018 — The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) announces that the Accelerating Medicines Partnership® Program (AMP®) is extending the Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA), Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) & Related Autoimmune Disorders program to a sixth year. Additional financial support of $8.9 million from the public and private sectors will enable program researchers to deploy cutting-edge technologies to further analyze samples collected from clinical research volunteers living with RA or lupus. This additional support will enhance the existing dataset that can be used to identify new drug targets and potentially develop new therapies for autoimmune diseases.

The AMP RA/SLE program launched in 2014 as a $41.6 million pre-competitive partnership with the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), both parts of the National Institutes of Health, the FNIH, industry and not-for-profit organizations. The program, managed by the FNIH, has made significant progress to ascertain and define biological pathways that link relevant molecular targets to clinical outcomes.

Over the course of this pioneering program, researchers collected joint tissue and blood from volunteers with RA and a kidney biopsy, skin tissue and blood from volunteers with lupus and analyzed these specimens through a longitudinal, multi-center study. Analyzing these samples at the single-cell level helped identify genes, proteins and chemical pathways that play important roles in these diseases. The first datasets were released in 2018. The project extension employs emerging technologies to create a much richer dataset. Additional analyses will maximize the ability to differentiate between subtypes of and patterns within a disease and shared pathways active in autoimmune diseases. Gaining a more comprehensive understanding of RA and lupus will provide promising new targets for drug development to advance research and improve treatment options for patients.

For more information on the AMP RA/SLE program, click here. To learn more about AMP, click here.