January 23, 2003

BIRMINGHAM, AL - UAB has received a five-year, $6.5 million grant from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Diseases to support UAB's Specialized Center of Research (SCOR) in the genetics of lupus. SCOR grants are prestigious awards given to institutions demonstrating proven expertise in a particular field of study.

Since its inception in 1998, the SCOR lupus grant has supported the creation of a national consortium of seven institutions - UAB, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Wake Forest, the University of Texas at Houston, the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation and the University of Puerto Rico - to study the genetics of lupus. "This is the only group like this in the country funded by NIH," said Dr. Robert Kimberly, professor and chair of the division of clinical immunology and rheumatology at UAB and director of the UAB's Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Diseases Center.

Research efforts focus on determining the genetic risk factors for lupus as well as genetic indicators of rate of progression and severity. "Clearly, the tools are at hand," said Kimberly. "The human genome project, while not perfect, has given us a knowledge base to ask - and answer - questions about an individual's genetic predisposition to develop lupus."

Research findings, Kimberly says, will have applications for other disorders as well. "Autoimmune disorders, such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, share a common cause - an unregulated immune system. Therefore, what we learn about lupus is likely to apply to other immune disorders too."