Submitted by Dr Tennie Videler on Sat, 26/10/2013 - 10:14
Congratulations to Ken Smith for being awarded the Lupus Research Institute Distinguished Innovator Award.
The Lupus Research Institute (LRI) announced that Professor Ken Smith is one of two recipients of its 2013 Distinguished Innovator Award. Ken Smith is pursuing an approach to predicting lupus outcome that has potential to reveal new ways to stop lupus progression. A complex autoimmune disease, lupus affects approximately five million people worldwide, primarily women.
Potential for Personalized Treatment
Dr. Smith's group has discovered that lupus patients who develop more severe disease have a distinctive pattern of genes turned on in their white blood cells. He and his group will investigate whether this gene pattern can be used as a practical test for long-term lupus prognosis. Such a predictive test would allow for safer and more effective personalized treatment. They will also explore what causes this gene pattern, in the search for new treatment strategies.
Only two of these prestigious award have ever been given outside the USA - both of them this year, and both to Australians!
