Lupus

2022 Emerging Leaders Prize - Joint 1st place, £100,000: Dr Eve Smith, NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer, University of Liverpool and Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust.

Dr Eve Smith’s research focuses on lupus in children, which is more severe than adult-onset lupus. It has greater disease activity, frequent, early occurrence of permanent organ damage, and higher death rates. Despite advances in care, there is an urgent need for a structured, evidence-informed approach to patient management, to improve outcomes in young children with lupus.

Dr Smith is leading the international ‘TARGET LUPUS’ research programme, directly responding to this unmet need. TARGET LUPUS aims to develop, implement, and test a novel ‘treat-to-target’ based approach to care, promoting early aggressive disease control to prevent organ damage, minimise adverse effects from drugs, and improve survival.

Dr Smith leads an international taskforce of global experts in childhood-onset lupus. Together they have developed recommendations and ‘paediatric specific’ target definitions underpinning the ‘treat-to-target’ approach to childhood-onset lupus.

Dr Smith’s long-term aim is to develop clinical trials in this and other rare paediatric diseases, with parallel laboratory research programmes.

Funding from the Foundation will hugely accelerate the development of these clinical trials, which are aimed at improving patient care. The prize funding will support a biostatistician undertaking analyses informing the programme, and facilitate taskforce meetings to agree fundamental aspects of TARGET LUPUS.